Eisenhower Health to require regular COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated healthcare workers

Eisenhower Health will be verifying which workers have been vaccinated so it can determine who will require regular coronavirus testing.

Employees were notified about the new requirements by an internal email sent out July 30:

"Beginning August 9, Eisenhower is required to have unvaccinated employees show documentation of being tested twice a week for COVID-19," said the email. "The best way to prevent returning to conditions like those we faced earlier this year is to get vaccinated and for everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated, to mask at work and away from work in public places."

This requirement comes after the California Department of Public Health issued an order requiring testing of all unvaccinated workers in several different healthcare settings. The order happened on July 26.

"So it is important for even, you know, really to push everyone to the point of getting vaccinated as much as we possibly can to cut down as much as possible the potential spread on our community, and the future development of even more variants," said chief medical officer for Eisenhower Health, Dr. Alan Williamson. "At this point, we're really getting down to sort of one on one communication with individual employees to understand, you know, how can we get past this barrier to get them vaccinated." 

The email said 90% of Eisenhower employees have been vaccinated. However, it adds it wants the hospital to reach 100% vaccination of eligible employees. Dr. Williamson said not everyone is eligible to be vaccinated because of medical reasons, so those employees will get tested weekly.

"This is an opportunity for Eisenhower to demonstrate once again that we care about each other and our community," said the email. "We're so close to 100% vaccination of employees- let's achieve that goal!"

Eisenhower Health said it is currently not requiring all of its employees to get vaccinated.

"At this point, our numbers are improving. So we're quite hopeful that we can get very close to that 100% mark of eligible people being vaccinated, really on a voluntary basis and not have to talk about mandates," said Williamson.