KC should require public employees to get vaccinated. Right now, about a third aren’t

Businesses across the region are trying to decide if their employees should be required to get COVID-19 vaccinations. It’s a critical decision: The delta variant continues to wreak havoc, causing unneeded sickness and death.

The City of Kansas City should take a leadership role by requiring its employees to get COVID shots, with only a few narrow exceptions.

Such a requirement is under review. “We are having active discussions about vaccine mandates as new guidance comes out,” the city’s communications office said in an email this week.

“We are trying to decide the best balance of employee rights and responsibilities (like religious and health considerations) with safety for all, just like every other major employer around the country,” the office said.

The safety and effectiveness of the vaccines is now beyond dispute. The Food and Drug Administration has fully approved the Pfizer vaccine. The vast majority of patients now undergoing treatment for COVID are unvaccinated.

Even in so-called breakthrough cases among vaccine recipients, COVID-19 is less deadly. “Fully vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection are less likely to develop serious illness than those who are unvaccinated and get COVID-19,” says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet hundreds of thousands of people in Missouri and Kansas still stubbornly refuse to get their shots, even though the vaccines are free and widely available. Just 44% of Missourians are now fully vaccinated; in Kansas, the number is slightly higher, at 48%.

That simply isn’t good enough. A poor vaccination rate threatens every one of us.

That’s where a vaccine mandate for city workers would help. To date, city workers are doing a better job getting vaccinated than the general public: According to figures provided by the communications office, 66% of city employees, including firefighters, have gotten shots.

But fully one-third of workers lack a vaccination, and that’s dangerous. Most city employees regularly and routinely interact with the public. They have a special responsibility to do whatever they can to prevent spread of the disease.

That’s particularly true of police officers, who are in the streets on a daily basis, and firefighters, who not only do their work in public but who live with one another while on duty.

The police department said it doesn’t even keep track of COVID infections or vaccination rates.

In the fire department, 76% of members have received their shots, which is good but still falls short. The department says 358 employees have tested positive for COVID since the beginning of the pandemic; that’s one worker out of four.

Three fire department employees have died from COVID.

City employees are “encouraged” to get shots, but they aren’t required. Unvaccinated employees are tested at least every 30 days, according to a policy issued in early June. City workers can’t be harassed for failing to get a shot, or for wearing a mask.

A broad requirement that city workers be vaccinated would require negotiations with city worker unions, including Local 500 for city employees and Local 42 for the fire service. “I’m going to make sure I talk with our public safety unions first on that,” Mayor Quinton Lucas told The Star Editorial Board Friday. “I do think we’ll get to a point certainly where all public-facing employees should be vaccinated.”

The police department says any vaccination requirement would have to come from the Board of Police Commissioners, not City Hall. If that’s right, the BOPC should begin that discussion immediately.

These talks are worth having. Reasonable, narrow exceptions for medical or religious concerns would be acceptable. At the same time, big loopholes would make any vaccine mandate largely worthless.

Those previously infected with COVID-19 have some protection, but less than those who’ve been vaccinated, and should still get the shots, the CDC says.

Many businesses require workers to either get the shots or be tested weekly for COVID. That isn’t ideal, but it’s better than the every-30-day tests at City Hall now. The goal must be vaccinating as many city workers as possible.

We have no illusions that a vaccine mandate for city workers would be easy to pass. Workers in other cities have protested vaccine requirements. (To them, we send this reminder: Your kids must get shots to go to school.)

But COVID-19 remains a deadly disease. Vaccines are only real way out of this pandemic, and City Hall should take a lead role in convincing the public of that fact by requiring its employees to get shots.