White House Recognizes ASCP for Encouraging COVID-19 Vaccinations

White House Vaccine Coordinator Bechara Choucair, MD, recently thanked ASCP for its efforts to “advance [COVID-19] vaccination efforts across the country.” ASCP has been in regular contact with White House and Administration staff during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic on issues ranging from COVID-19 testing and vaccine uptake to laboratory workforce issues.

ASCP recently called for a more aggressive response by federal, state and local governments, as well as businesses and schools, to encourage COVID-19 vaccination. In an August 11 statement, ASCP urged that upon full approval of a COVID-19 vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration, which occurred on August 23, that these entities expand their efforts to increase vaccine uptake, including through the use of vaccine requirements. ASCP was also one of the first signers of a July 26 statement by more than 50 medical specialty societies, including the American Medical Association, calling on healthcare and long-term care organizations to require employees to be vaccinated. ASCP recognizes while “some [individuals] cannot be vaccinated because of identified medical reasons and should be exempted from a mandate, they constitute a small minority of all workers.”

Increasingly, COVID-19 has become a pandemic of the unvaccinated as approximately 98 percent of recently hospitalized COVID-19 patients were unvaccinated. While breakout infections have affected some vaccinated individuals, the fact that these individuals are far less likely to suffer serious symptoms, hospitalizations, or death proves the vaccines are working. Moreover, serious side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine are rare, while COVID-19 is more likely to cause some long term health conditions, like myocarditis, than the vaccine.