Flu Vaccine Requirement for Health Workers Is Lifted

The Paterson administration backed away on Thursday evening from a health regulation that would have compelled hundreds of thousands of health care workers and hospital volunteers to be vaccinated for seasonal and swine flu. Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the State Health Department, said in an interview Thursday night that the regulation had been suspended because of a shortage of H1N1 vaccine. She said that given the shortage, the state wanted to concentrate its vaccination efforts on pregnant women and children. “Since the vaccine is so scarce right now and since the virus has proved especially difficult for pregnant women and young people — there have been deaths — we felt that the best use of the scarce amount of vaccine right now is for those populations,” Ms. Hutton said. In August, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, issued a regulation ordering health care workers to be vaccinated by Nov. 30, and hospitals warned that workers who refused could be disciplined or fired. But last week, a judge in Albany halted enforcement of the rule in response to a lawsuit filed by three nurses who claimed that the requirement needed legislative approval and that the commissioner had overstepped his authority. Ms. Hutton said that Dr. Daines’s change of policy — which was announced late Thursday in a statement from the office of Gov. David A. Paterson — was not influenced by the litigation. New York found itself isolated in its insistence on mandatory vaccinations. No other state adopted a similar regulation, and neither the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the World Health Organization were recommending mandatory H1N1 vaccinations. Some public health experts had applauded the rule. But referring to mandatory vaccination, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the federal centers, said last summer that “this is just not the right flu season to take this on,” because of the logistical difficulties of distributing both seasonal and swine flu vaccines. Those logistical concerns turned out to be warranted. The governor pointed to a statement by the centers that said that only about 23 percent of the anticipated vaccine supply would be available by month’s end. So far this week, the federal agency has allowed the state to order 146,300 doses of vaccine, while physicians have asked for more than 1.48 million doses, Ms. Hutton said. “They don’t expect things to get markedly better until well into November, perhaps December,” Ms. Hutton said. “Even while the mandate was in effect, we were telling our hospital workers that if you have a choice of vaccinating patients or workers, please vaccinate patients.”Terence L. Kindlon, a lawyer for the three nurses, said on Thursday evening: “This is a good result, because the decision whether or not to be vaccinated is one that should be made by the individual. That’s all we ever wanted to establish here: the right to make that choice.”