Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority

The Hastings Center

January 5, 2021

Kyle Ferguson and Arthur Caplan

After a hospital system has offered vaccine to all of its frontline staff and administered doses to the willing, what should it do with remaining doses?  Some hospital systems are receiving supply in excess of first-phase allocation’s demand. Those institutions are now pivoting toward vaccinating all of their employees, even those who, but for employment in that system, would not be vaccinated until later phases. And it is here, faced with the opportunity to be vaccinated, that confusion and apparent ethical dilemmas arise.