ALBANY, New York (LifeSiteNews) — Healthcare workers in the state of New York ordered to get the COVID-19 jab will not have the option of a religious exemption, thanks to emergency authorization passed late last week.
In Thursday’s decision, a New York State Department of Health board unanimously approved a COVID-19 mandate for all New York healthcare personnel.
In passing the measure the board also scrubbed the option for a religious exemption, effectively forcing the more than 450,000 healthcare workers in the state to get the jab whether they have religious objections to the abortion-tainted injection or not.
Under the new rules, no more religious exemptions will be granted, and previously obtained religious exemptions will be invalidated.
The new emergency mandate took effect immediately, and will be subject to review after 90 days.
As noted by Becker’s Hospital Review, the mandate will apply to those working in hospitals, nursing homes, diagnostic and treatment centers, adult care facilities, certified home health agencies, hospices, long-term home health care programs, AIDS home care programs, licensed home care service agencies, and limited licensed home care service agencies.
Personnel subject to the new rules include all employees, members of the medical and nursing staff, contract staff, students, and volunteers, “who engage in activities such that if they were infected with COVID-19, they could potentially expose other covered personnel, patients or residents to the disease,” the Democrat & Chronicle reported.
Employees working in hospitals and nursing homes must get the first dose of their shot by September 27, while employees of other facilities named in the statement must get their first dose by October 7.
Those who refuse to take the injection may be fired.
Many people have strong reasons for opposing the experimental shot, particularly those whose religious beliefs lead them to oppose the murder of unborn babies through abortion.
Such moral positions have led many to object to the COVID-19 “vaccines,” since all of the coronavirus injections currently on the market have close ties with abortion.
Moderna and Pfizer used cell lines derived from aborted babies for testing, while J&J’s shot was directly produced in the human fetal cell line PER.C6, which was derived from retinal tissue taken from an 18-week-old baby boy who was aborted in the Netherlands in 1985 and reduced to a fetal cell line in 1995.
But the Department of Health has made no allowances for religious objection to the shots.
Department of Health (DOH) attorney Vanessa Murphy said no facilities in the state will be permitted to offer religious exemptions moving forward.
“We’re not constitutionally required to provide a religious exemption,” Murphy explained. “You see that with the Measles and the Mumps requirement for health care workers.”
It is unclear how the mandate will be enforced, but it appears the matter will be left up to individual facilities to decide.
Administrators of hospitals and other institutions subject to the order will be granted authority to determine how to require employees to abide by the mandate.
“I think in terms of compliance and enforcement, it’s at the facility level,” Murphy said. “We’ve built in provisions to require covered entities upon request to report information to us. I don’t know if we’ve worked out the details of how we would audit or ensure compliance.”
Alternatives to vaccination, like masking and bi-weekly testing, were not discussed during the Thursday meeting.
Failure to comply with the mandate may result in termination of employment.
As reported by the New York Post, the rules passed by the DOH states that “[c]overed entities may terminate personnel who are not fully vaccinated and do not have a valid medical exemption and are unable to otherwise ensure individuals are not engaged in patient/resident care or expose other covered personnel.”
The strict mandate requiring healthcare workers to get the experimental drug has led some to fear that employees may quit their jobs rather than submit to the injection.
During the public comment segment of the Thursday meeting, Al Cardillo, CEO of the Home Care Association of New York State, said he was worried the mandate would lead to a depletion of an already strained workforce.
“We really encourage you to consider the shortage, in the emergency situation that we have,” Cardillo said, asking the board to give healthcare workers more time than allotted by the mandate’s deadline.
Journalist, conservative author, and former New York Times writer Alex Berenson, who has written significantly on COVID-19 restrictions and mandates over the past 18 months, reported there is a significant chance of a major shortage of nurses starting October 1 due to the implementation of vaccine mandates.
The existing shortage of skilled healthcare workers may be a point of leverage for those opposed to taking the experimental drug.
With the FDA's decision to officially approve the Pfizer COVID jab, calls to vaccinate schoolchildren and more university students will become louder and more insistent.
But, America's children and young people must be protected from unknown future side-effects of these drugs, and parents' rights must be respected!
Please SIGN this urgent petition which demands that COVID vaccine mandates for schools and universities be prohibited in every U.S. state.
This petition will be sent to the leaders of every state legislature and to every governor in the United States, urging them to pass emergency legislation banning vaccine mandates for primary, secondary and university students.
Students simply have the right to be educated without being forced to violate deeply held principles and their own bodily integrity!
But, unfortunately, some private schools, like the Jesuit-run Brophy College Prep School in Phoenix, Arizona, have already mandated the COVID vaccine for their students, in spite of massive parental opposition. If parents or students reject the vaccine, students face intrusive weekly testing and exclusion from extra-curricular activities.
Also, more and more universities have actually started to disenroll unvaccinated students. But, even where that is not happening, not taking the vaccine often subjects students to masking, extra testing and additional administrative obstacles.
And now, with the Pfizer jab approval, Joe Biden's Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, is threatening more mandates.
While it is true that the FDA approval for the Pfizer jab only pertains to those over 16 years of age, the pharmaceutical industry and some state actors have been pushing to get approval for pre-teens!
So, it stands to reason that the Federal government will try to impose vaccines on schools, for those 16 and over, as well as on all university students. But, eventually, such mandates could even apply to younger and younger schoolchildren.
That's why state legislatures and governors must fight back against any attempt to coerce school students to take a COVID vaccine against their will!
Science and logic should dictate public health policy. And both say that mandatory vaccination for children and university students is not only unnecessary, but very likely dangerous for the future health of America's youth.
The CDC reports that the rates of death, injury, and hospitalization are very, very low for children and adolescents and that COVID transmission in schools, both from student to staff and between students, is also very low.
And a European CDC study concluded that "no evidence has been found to suggest that children or educational settings are primary drivers of COVID transmission."
So, right now, we know that schoolchildren are at very low risk of becoming very ill as a result of COVID, or of even transmitting the virus.
But, we don't know how a hastily-prepared, unstudied vaccine will affect the health of millions of America's youth in the future.
Gambling with their future, and the future of our nation, should not even be entertained for one second!
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition urging state legislatures to ban COVID vaccine mandates for schools and universities - both public and private. Urge them to respect parents' rights, informed consent and bodily integrity.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Ivy League schools mandate COVID-19 vaccines for fall' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ivy-league-mandates-covid-19-vaccines-for-the-fall/
'FDA approval of Pfizer jab isn’t about our health, it’s about mandating the shots' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/fda-approval-of-pfizer-jab-isnt-about-our-health-its-about-mandating-the-shots
Berenson, who has spoken to many in the healthcare industry who have shared their worries about the experimental injections, said many are choosing to walk away from their jobs rather than take the shot.
“They’re quitting because they don’t want to be vaccinated,” Berenson said in an August 27 tweet.
Earlier this month Berenson shared an email from a source who told him that “nurses are the tip of the spear in the resistance to vaccine mandates.”
In another email, an Orange County, California nurse told Berenson she and her colleagues have been ordered by the state government to get the shot by the end of September, but “[t]here are currently 70 NICU nurses refusing vaccination.”
According to the anonymous California nurse, “That unit will be in bad shape if they lose 70 staff members. Many nurses in other units are also refusing.”
In response to Berenson’s many tweets slamming vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and Big Tech censorship, Twitter permanently suspended Berenson on Saturday.
Thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of adverse reactions to the experimental coronavirus inoculations have been reported to the American government’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS).