Salem Business Vaccine, Mask Order Proposals Put On Hold

SALEM, MA — As Salem Hospital President Dr. David Roberts urged all coronavirus mitigation efforts possible ahead of a potential omicron surge, and both residents and Salem Board of Health members expressed concern about equity and enforcement of a vaccination order to enter city businesses, the Board did not vote on any renewed indoor business mask mandate or a business-entry vaccination order Tuesday night.

The one coronavirus-related action vote the Board did take was to endorse what was presented as Mayor Kim Driscoll's proposal that all city and school employees must be vaccinated against the virus early in 2022. Currently, unvaccinated city and school employees have the option of weekly testing.

"It seems like we have a consensus that none of us feels comfortable taking a vote on a mitigation measure," said Board member and Acting Chair Paul Kirby. "Which kind of satisfies nobody. There are people who want us to do something right this instant. There are other people who want to have some assurance that we won't ever do it. And neither one of those things is happening tonight."

Board of Health Chair Dr. Jeremy Schiller clarified to Patch on Wednesday that Tuesday's meeting was for discussion purposes and did not include an agenda item for a possible vote on the mitigation measures.

While most of the public comment was against a business-entry vaccine order, the strongest voice in favor of one was Roberts. He said that while hospitalizations have yet to rise significantly amid the latest delta variant surge, lack of staffing is already leading to 12-hour waits in the emergency room and dozens of patients leaving the emergency room before they are examined. He said current staffing levels will not be able to withstand any type of omicron variant surge.

"We're kind of overwhelmed in our current state," he said. "We don't have the capacity to take care of the patients we have now.

"Anything we can do to increase the vaccination rates will help with overwhelming the hospitals. Another day of being overwhelmed is another day a nurse says: 'OK, I'm out.' ... We can't wait for another 30 percent increase in COVID cases and think: 'OK, what can we do?' By then, the battle may be lost."

Roberts said the best way to avoid a future surge is near-universal vaccination and the best way to achieve that, in his opinion, is a vaccine order that prevents unvaccinated people from doing everyday things that people like to do.

"We should protect the vaccinated people of the city of Salem from the unvaccinated," he determined. "And we should make it difficult for unvaccinated people to interact with vaccinated people."

But that was not a sentiment most who spoke in public comment shared, and while the Board members said they believed everyone should get vaccinated against the virus, there was hesitancy around how a mandate would be enforced, concerns about diverse populations of the city that make up a disproportionate share of its unvaccinated residents and the overall effectiveness of mask or vaccine mandates within Salem if the rest of the North Shore is not going to follow suit.

"It feels much more complicated right now," Board member Sara Moore said. "I was confident in the decisions we've made (in the pandemic) up to now. But this is more complicated. I do really worry about the consequences for enforcement with vaccine regulations to enter businesses."

Kirby noted that past city masking and testing orders pertaining to the Halloween season were "very unique to Salem" and that "uneven implementation" of an open-ended renewed order was also a concern.

Health Agent David Greenbaum said there have been some discussions with neighboring cities and towns about additional mitigation efforts regionally, but allowed hopes of any statewide rules are minimal.

"We know the governor is not going to do anything," Greenbaum said.

Gov. Charlie Baker said on Monday there are "no plans" to bring back a statewide mask mandate and that while the state has vaccination orders for its employees, he has not been inclined to implement them for private businesses.

Board members agreed that any potential business-entry vaccine requirement would also have to include a vaccine order for all employees of those businesses to be logical and effective.

"Vaccination is the only way out of this," Greenbaum said. "Getting everybody vaccinated — and when I say 'getting everybody vaccinated' I don't mean just here in Salem. I mean throughout the commonwealth, throughout the United States, and throughout every country in the world."

The majority of the debate centered around a potential vaccine order with less discussion about reimposing the indoor business mask mandate that was allowed to expire as scheduled on Nov. 13.

Roberts said he supported any mitigation effort that would cut down on increase hospitalizations but allowed mask orders are "necessary, but insufficient."

"If you want to reduce COVID in the community vaccination is way more effective than masks," he said.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)