The vaunted Covid vaccination caused mass sick leave and absenteeism in all sectors – more than Covid-19. However, in essential areas where there is already an acute shortage of staff, this is all the more important: If employees in clinics and other medical facilities are unable to work due to illness, patient care is in acute jeopardy. One Study now shows: A third of the employees in the German health care system took sick leave after the Covid vaccination.
The work was presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Lisbon, Portugal, at the end of April. 1,797 healthcare workers over the age of 18 participated in the online questionnaire study. Almost 33 percent of the participants took sick leave after the Covid shot, In total, the participants had 1,777 sick days as a result of the vaccination.
On average, those affected were absent for two days. They were most likely to be on sick leave after the third dose of the vaccine. While only 5.65 percent of the study participants reported sick after the first dose (usually after receiving a vector vaccine), 20.66 percent reported sick after the second and 27.31 percent after the third vaccination.
Those who received an mRNA vaccine from BioNTech/Pfizer or Moderna tended to be on sick leave after the second or third dose. The sick leave after the third dose was significantly longer after the Moderna vaccine than after the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine.
One author of the study, Julia Reusch from the University Hospital of Würzburg, called for further investigation: The number of side effects and the resulting downtime is not negligible and must be investigated.
