COLUMBUS, Ohio — OhioHealth on Monday paused the timeline of having all of their associates and providers vaccinated against COVID-19.
In August, the hospital system said all 35,000 of its associates, providers and volunteers had to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 1.
Mount Carmel, Nationwide Children's Hospital and other Columbus-area hospitals also made the decision to require employees to be vaccinated against the virus.
OhioHealth said in a release that they are not changing the mandate process, but pausing the timeline due to recent regulatory and legislative issues, but did not specify which pieces of legislation or regulations.
Last month, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost joined a federal lawsuit to stop a mandate for healthcare workers to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
You can read OhioHealth's statement below:
“We believe, like the majority of health systems nationwide, that requiring the vaccine is the right thing to do to protect our patients and staff from COVID-19 and are moving forward with our decision to require the COVID-19 vaccine or have an approved medical or religious exemption.
Our process was developed to ensure compliance with state and federal law. However, given the recent regulatory and legislative issues we are pausing our timeline. We are not changing our mandate process, but we are pausing on the timeline at this point."