MILWAUKEE (NBC 26) — Advocate Aurora Health announced a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for employees Wednesday.
The health organization says it will require team members to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by Oct. 15.
“We are first and foremost a safe, clinical enterprise. Our ultimate duty is to protect the health and safety of our team members, patients, and communities,” President and CEO Jim Skogsbergh told team members Wednesday in a video. “The data is overwhelming. This vaccine is safe, and it’s highly effective in preventing infection and even more so, serious illness and death.”
Advocate Aurora says inpatient COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased five-fold over the past three weeks, and the system’s test positivity rate is the highest it’s been since January.
This announcement comes as the highly contagious delta variant spreads across the country.