A hospital in Long Beach, New York, a small city of 35,000, announced the closure of its emergency room Monday afternoon. Patients appearing at Mount Sinai South Nassau for emergency care will be directed to the hospital’s main campus in Oceanside. Driving by car in light traffic between the closed emergency room and the Oceanside facility takes 11 minutes, according to Google.
The city hospital’s emergency room was closed to comply with a mandate issued Thursday by the state’s Department of Health. The mandate required hospitals to suspend staff working under temporary religious exemptions without proof of a COVID-19 vaccination or a valid medical exemption. Mount Sinai administrators said the ER shutdown was a temporary measure that was expected to last four weeks. They noted it may be extended if not enough staff are available.
Nurses had sued New York State over the dichotomy of giving medical exemptions but not religious exemptions.
New York’s mandate requires all state healthcare workers to receive the vaccine and allows an exemption only for those with medical exemptions.
A lawyer for healthcare workers said the mandate violates the First Amendment because it requires employers to terminate healthcare workers who “refuse a vaccine because of their religious beliefs” but offers an exemption to those workers who refuse based on a medical objection.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) issued an August mandate requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk being fired. Ironically, it was shortly before he was forced out of office himself.
A federal judge in Utica last month
granted a restraining order and halted the state vaccination mandate because it does not provide for religious exemptions. The plaintiffs in the case described themselves as devout Christians who refuse to use any product derived from aborted fetuses.
Cuomo’s original deadline was extended due to the restraining order that delayed implementation. After a Manhattan Appeals Court overturned the Utica judge’s decision, the DOH sent a statewide memo giving the “vax or ax” deadline of Nov. 22.
“We regret having to take this step but the safety of our patients is always our No. 1 priority,” said hospital president Adhi Sharma. “This will allow us to shift nursing staff to the Oceanside campus to ensure that we maintain adequate staffing at the Emergency Department at our main campus.”
The Long Beach hospital’s emergency room opened in 2015 and handles approximately 10,000 visits per year, according to the hospital statement. “Most of those patients are treated and released without having to be transferred to the hospital in Oceanside,” the hospital added in the statement.
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