Ichud Hatzala requiring Covid-19 vaccination to volunteer

Kikar is reporting that Ichud Hatzala management has made a major decision.

Until now most of the major discussions of forcing vaccinations has been via the government - in the education system, in various capacities such as tourism servers, government clerks, there was a situation in the religious courts (the batei din), etc. the private sector hasn't really been discussed much, except by people wondering what might be.

Ichud Hatzala management has announced that all Hatzala volunteers must be vaccinated by March 7 with both doses in order to continue volunteering in the organization. Any volunteer not vaccinated by then will not be allowed to continue in Ichud Hatzala.

Eli Beer, head of Ichud Hatzala, said the decision has been made in order to safeguard the health of the patients, the volunteers and their families. It hurts to have to remove volunteers from the system,  but it will hurt more if anyone else will get sick or die because of refusing to take the vaccine.

Beer also hopes that other organizations will follow in his footsteps on this issue and make similar decisions, and hopes that the government will require vaccinations for all volunteers and government workers. This is the only way to prevent unnecessary deaths.

This is a big decision. The only fault I see with it is that the date given, March 7, is less than 2 weeks form today. If a volunteer hears this announcement even today and immediately runs out to get vaccinated so as to not lose his ability to continue volunteering, he or she would not be able to be fully vaccinated by March 7. It takes 3 weeks from dose 1 until you can get dose 2, and then it takes another week to ten days for the immunity to become maximal.

Obviously after the deadline people can get vaccinated and become volunteers, but it seems that the date of March 7 for losing status doesn't give current volunteers a fair chance to keep their status.

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