A U.S. judge has dismissed the lawsuit of more than 100 employees at one of Texas' largest hospitals, who challenged the requirement to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
“Receiving a vaccination against Covid-19 is not an illegal act
,
”
Judge Lynn Hughes argued on Saturday.
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According to the 117 employees who decided to take the case to court, the Houston Methodist Hospital requirement was illegal since at the time the available injections were reserved for priority people and not yet extended to the whole of the population. The hospital had set a deadline of June 7 for workers to certify their vaccination, with at least a first dose. An internal note specified that the recalcitrant would be suspended for two weeks without pay, then dismissed.
The judge also pointed out the unfortunate analogy made with human medical guinea pigs in concentration camps by the plaintiff Jennifer Bridges, spearhead of the procedure.
The complainant had compared the threat of being fired for refusing to be vaccinated to
"forced medical experiments during the Holocaust"
.
"To equate the injection requirement with medical experiments in concentration camps is reprehensible"
, insisted Judge Hughes.
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Houston is home to the world's largest medical complex, Texas Medical Center, a sprawling neighborhood that includes hospitals and research centers.
The center employs a total of more than 106,000 healthcare workers and receives some 10 million patients per year.
In the United States, more than 173 million people, or more than 50% of the population, have so far received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
A December 2020 study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation among 1,676 adults found that 29% of people working in the medical industry did not or probably did not want to be vaccinated.
