With coronavirus surging, St Petersburg considers mandating vaccines for employees tampabay.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tampabay.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As I walked up the stairs to our occupational health office, I realized how thankful I was for the opportunity to receive, as a volunteer paramedic, an annual physical from my place of work, the Alexandria (Va.) Fire Department (AFD).
I signed in on the clipboard, printed my badge number, and settled in for the hours-long process that typically includes the physical exam, a treadmill stress test and EKG, the hearing test we all fear failing, a review of lab work, and that one thing where you have to breathe into a tube until you almost pass out.
So when I was summoned into a room by a woman wielding an ultrasound probe in one hand and a flimsy paper robe in the other, I was surprised. “Is this a new part of the physical?” I asked her. She responded that her company, LifeScan Wellness, incorporates a full-body ultrasound scan in its public safety physicals.
Tampa Bay Times
Florida’s first COVID-19 vaccine doses landed in Tampa Bay this week, poised for distribution to the people public health officials determined need it first.
Millions of healthcare workers and the residents of long-term care facilities will get vaccinated first. Next up will be essential workers, including firefighters, paramedics and police officers.
But when it’s their turn, will Tampa Bay’s first-responders get the shot?
A significant number of firefighters and officers said they weren’t interested or were undecided, according to surveys of local fire and police departments conducted in recent weeks.
In Pinellas County, 549 paramedics and emergency medical technicians who work for the county’s fire departments and ambulance company about 40 percent of the 1,380 respondents said they don’t want to get vaccinated. Another 28 percent, or 385 people, said they’re undecided. That means the number who do want the vaccine 32 percent, or 446 people