PENDLETON — As the sun crested the hills over CHI St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton on Tuesday, Oct. 19, a group of health care workers who had just their final 12-hour shift stood in the cold.

The workers were not vaccinated against COVID-19, and the hospital placed them on 90 days of unpaid leave after the state’s mandate went into effect the day before. A hospital spokesperson said in an email the hospital placed 15 employees — or 4% of its more than 370 employees — on leave.

The group joined more than 50 protesters outside the hospital, where a record number of COVID-19 patients were admitted during a delta variant crisis that has infected, hospitalized and killed more county residents than any other pandemic surge since March 2020, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority and Umatilla County Public Health.

First they protested near the parking lot. Then they protested at the nearby intersection. For more than an hour, they cheered and held signs decrying the mandate while dozens of vehicles, including ambulances, honked as they passed.

Among them was Michelle Burcham, a hospital chaplain who said her request for a religious exemption was denied. Burcham joined the hospital in 2017. She said she loved her job and enjoyed supporting her community. But when she heard on Oct. 16 that her request had been denied, she felt that it was a sign.

“From the beginning, I didn’t make it about the vaccine,” she said. “I made it about, God’s directing me to another place.”

Emily Smith, a St. Anthony spokesperson, said in an email that employees who were denied exemptions could request their case be reevaluated and added “most who chose to resubmit were subsequently approved.”

But at this point, Burcham said she’s uninterested in pursuing that route. She said she doesn’t want to lose the connection she’s had with her community through her job, adding she would consider helping out part-time if given the opportunity.

“I don’t know how a Catholic, religious institution decides if your religious exemption is valid or not,” she said. “And I do think it’s disrespectful of them to say that other workers don’t care about their community if they’re not vaccinated.”

Smith said the hospital could not comment on the specific case of any employee but explained exemption requests are processed by the national office for CommonSpirit Health, a part of Catholic Health Initiatives, the national Catholic health care system that owns St. Anthony.

In a statement in response to the protest, Smith said the hospital had “no choice but to comply” with the Gov. Kate Brown’s and President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The statement said the vaccine is the “most effective tool we have to manage” coronavirus.

“In our efforts to improve health and advance social justice, especially for those who are most vulnerable, we seek to diminish the risk of bringing an infectious disease into the workplace, exposing our families to it, or spreading it in our community,” according to the statement. “St. Anthony is committed to optimizing safety for its patients, staff, and visitors.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also states COVID-19 vaccines are safe and highly effective at preventing severe cases, hospitalization and death.

Protesters decry mandate

Protesters nationwide have voiced opposition to what they describe as government overreach amid state and federal vaccine mandates. Outside St. Anthony, a group held signs calling for medical freedom and bodily autonomy. Teenagers to older adults took photos, smiled, laughed and waved. Several health care workers and attendees said they felt like they were standing for a good cause.

“We have rights as citizens, living in a free country,” said Julie Malcom, a 29-year employee at St. Anthony who worked in the labor and delivery unit.

Malcolm, a born-and-raised Pendleton resident, said her unit has roughly a dozen workers. She and Dawn Jeffers, who also worked in the labor and delivery unit, said they are concerned about how the unit will operate with about a quarter fewer workers.

“It feels like we’re a number, not a person,” said Jeffers, who said she worked at St. Anthony for more than eight years. She called hospital policies requiring weekly COVID-19 tests among unvaccinated employees “discriminatory.”

Multiple health care workers pointed out hospitals everywhere are already facing staffing shortages, and they were worried the mandate would make things worse.

Brown announced the mandate in August in an effort to increase vaccinations statewide. It came as the state’s health care system was throttled by the delta variant, the highly infectious strain of the coronavirus which drove a case spike that killed more than 1,000 Oregonians from July through September, according to OHA.

Fifty Umatilla County residents who contracted the virus have died since the beginning of July, making it the deadliest pandemic surge since March 2020, according to the OHA and Umatilla County. And unvaccinated residents were hit the hardest. Since May, roughly 90% of all COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Umatilla County have been unvaccinated, according to data from the county’s health department.

In August, nearly 4 in 5 fatalities came from unvaccinated Oregonians, according to OHA. In July, 45 out of the state’s 55 COVID-19 deaths came from vaccinated people.

But several protest attendees said health care workers should not have to get the shot if it remains possible to contract COVID-19 while vaccinated.

Andrina Thornton, a fifth-year nurse on the hospital’s medical floor, said she came to the protest in solidarity with the nurses who lost their jobs. She pointed out that many community members had their children delivered by the labor and delivery employees placed on leave.

“It’s really sad that we are losing nurses who are born and raised here, invested in our community,” she said. “These are home-grown nurses.”

Thornton said she received a vaccine exemption but said she’ll be getting vaccinated to continue her work in the Army National Guard. She said she wants the community to know about how hard this will be on the small hospital.

“People need to think about the consequences as a whole,” she said. “All of us nurses here know that COVID is real. All of us nurses here know that we’re losing people of COVID, and it’s unfortunate. But we’ve been in the trenches for 18 months, unvaccinated, and now that choice is being taken away from us, and there’s a lot of nurses that strongly feel that their health is their choice.”