Vaccination in the health sector: clinic staff are well protected

Far more than 90 percent of the employees in German hospitals were vaccinated against Corona in the summer. The doctors were particularly willing to vaccinate. These are just two results of an online survey by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) that has now been published in Berlin. Accordingly, in the period of the study - from June 26 to July 26 - 91 percent of the participating hospital staff were already fully vaccinated, four percent were incompletely vaccinated, five percent were unvaccinated. For staff with a particularly high risk of infection or contact with high-risk patients, the rates were comparatively high at 92 percent, four percent and five percent.

According to the RKI, 16,975 employees from 111 facilities took part in the second hospital-based online survey on Covid 19 vaccination (KROCO). A third of them were nursing staff, 14 percent were from the medical service, 21 percent were from administration, the majority of the rest of the participants worked primarily in the medical-technical and therapeutic areas, a few also as kitchen and cleaning staff.

As a reason for vaccination, 94 percent of respondents stated that they wanted to protect their private environment, 93 percent ticked that they wanted to protect themselves. 84 percent felt they had been asked to vaccinate by their employer, 76 percent wanted their colleagues and 61 percent to protect their patients. Almost one in three stated that they did not want to leave their colleagues in the lurch by failing on their own. The participants could tick any number of answers to the questions.

The reasons against a Covid 19 vaccination were also asked among the unvaccinated: 65 percent said they were afraid of permanent damage, 54 percent expressed their concern that the vaccination technologies were unsafe.

49 percent wanted to wait and see, 47 percent were afraid of severe side effects, 21 percent were already infected with Sars-CoV-2.

After all, 13 percent said they were “afraid of infertility through vaccination”.

And five percent had not yet been offered a vaccination.