Nurses in the St. Charles Bend intensive care unit treat a COVID-19 patient May 27, 2021.

BEND — Hospital administrators have lifted the requirement that all health care professionals at St. Charles Health System must be vaccinated against COVID-19, nearly a year after it had been put in place.

The health system said it would now allow workers who had an approved religious or medical exception to work at the health system even if they are not vaccinated against COVID-19. This follows the state’s rules requiring COVID-19 vaccination updated in April.

The changing nature of the virus that causes COVID-19 prompted the health system to amend its COVID-19 vaccination requirements, said Dr. Cynthia Maree, St. Charles Health System medical director of infection prevention services.

“We have decreasing numbers in terms of disease and the severity of it,” Maree said of COVID-19.

“That’s the evolution of the pandemic itself.”

On Thursday there were 14 COVID-19 patients in St. Charles hospitals, Maree said. On Wednesday there were six new COVID-19 cases reported in Crook County, 48 in Deschutes County and three in Jefferson County, according to a Deschutes County Health Services report.

Statewide, the Oregon Health Authority reported 691 new COVID-19 cases and 11 new COVID-19 deaths on the same day.

Removing the vaccination requirement puts the Central Oregon health system more in line with other Oregon hospitals, said Kevin Mealy, Oregon Nurses Association communication manager.

“From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon’s nurses have been committed to following the science, prioritizing Oregonians’ health and safety and educating the public about vaccines,” Mealy said. “As health systems like St. Charles consider changes to its policies, hospital executives must continue to listen to front-line nurses and health care workers.”

With a decline in the number of COVID-19 cases and fewer hospitalizations, countywide and statewide, the Oregon Health Authority is seeing conditions similar to the end of the pandemic, said Rudy Owens, a health authority public affairs specialist.

“It’s important to remember that the virus continues to mutate at a rapid pace and there continues to be uncertainty about how future variants will spread as well as their level of severity,” Owens said. “We are hopeful the new boosters will welcome yet another, positive new phase in the pandemic in which COVID-19 vaccinations become an annual thing, much like flu shots and we manage the virus as something we expect to always be part of our lives.”

Joan Ching, a St. Charles Health System chief nursing executive, was instrumental in initiating the policy change. Ching said that the therapies available have helped reduce the severity of the virus.

With Deschutes County about 82% vaccinated, or protected because of having had COVID-19, the hospital is in a place where it can accommodate medical professionals that have gone through the process of obtaining a medical or religious exception, Maree said.

Unvaccinated health care workers will be required to wear an N95 respirator while with patients. When not involved with patients, unvaccinated health care employees will be expected to wear medical grade procedure masks, according the hospital system. When eating or drinking a mask may be removed, but the employee will be asked to maintain a 6 foot distance.

“As the pandemic evolves, it is important that St. Charles evolve with it,” Ching said in a prepared statement. “We believe we’re now in a place where we can reasonably allow unvaccinated people to work in a health care setting — without putting others at a significant risk — if they wear a N95 respirator.”

Ching said the staff is confident this kind of mask will provide protection to the employee and patient and is the same mask staff use when in contact with patients with highly transmissible diseases like tuberculosis.

It was Oct. 18, 2021 when Oregon began requiring that all medical personnel be vaccinated or obtain an exception for religious or medical reasons. St. Charles Health System reported that its staff was 93.5% vaccinated. At the time, 84 health care professions applied for medical exceptions. The hospital system approved five and denied 17. The rest did not submit completed forms, according to a hospital statement at the time.

Another 271 health care professionals applied for religious exceptions, of which 211 were approved, five were declined and 55 did not complete the necessary paperwork.

At the time the hospital system tried to offer remote work or put some on unpaid leave of absence. In all 180 employees were forced to quit.

The hospital system is hoping that some of those employees will return.

“When I spoke to many of the caregivers who were sad to leave their positions, some of them will be happy to come back to do the job that they very much want to do,”

Maree said.