On Monday, the North Carolina-based Novant Health hospital system announced that more than 175 of its workers have been fired after refusing to comply with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The mass-firings took place across 15 hospitals and more than 800 clinics.
About 375 Novant Health employees across 15 hospitals, 800 clinics and hundreds of outpatient facilities were non-compliant with the program were suspended last week over non-compliance. Those employees were given a five-day period to comply or be faced with termination. (READ MORE: Novant Health Doc Was Previously Busted For Saying They Should Be ‘Scary To The Public’ And Inflate COVID Numbers)
“If a team member remains non-compliant after this five-day suspension period, he or she will have their employment with Novant Health terminated,” a statement read. Ultimately, about 175 employees opted not to be coerced into vaccination and were fired. After the compliance of the other 200-plus workers, Novant Health boasted that their vaccination rate was now over 99%. Novant Health employs over 35,000 workers all together.
Team members are considered compliant if they have received the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, a first dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, or if they applied for, and were granted, a medical or religious exemption. Employees who have received one dose have until October 15 to get fully vaccinated in order to remain in compliance.
Similar measures are beginning to take place in other states. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul will be deploying the National Guard in order to fill upcoming critical staffing shortages after scores of unvaccinated workers are fired. On the federal level, Joe Biden announced that businesses with more than 100 employees would require a COVID vaccine mandate or be met with heavy fines in a statement earlier this month. He added that the choice to get vaccinated is “not about freedom or personal choice.”
Novant Health previously made international news after National File published bombshell audio that shows the hospital administrators discussing how they could inflate the number of total COVID-19 patients in order to be “scary” to the public and convince them to get one of the controversial COVID-19 vaccines. National File reported:
After the first speaker seems to answer a question about how COVID-19 patient counts are determined and shared with the public, MacDonald responds, “I guess my feeling at this point in time is, maybe we need to be completely a little bit more scary to the public.” She then introduces her idea to inflate the total number of COVID-19 patients by counting patients who recovered. “There are many people still hospitalized that we’re considering post-COVID, but they’re not counted in those numbers,” Rudyk explains, “So how do we include those post-COVID people in the numbers of the patients we have in the hospital?”
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“So I just want to say we have to be more blunt, we have to be more forceful, we have to see something coming out: ‘If you don’t get vaccinated, you know you’re going to die,’” Rudyk said, laughing. “I mean let’s just be really blunt with these people.”
Since the video surfaced on social media, the hospital has released a statement claiming that the “team members involved” in the meeting are stressed and frustrated that more people are not taking one of the controversial vaccines. However, the hospital clarified that Rudyk’s suggestion was not taken: “The data we have been sharing does not include patients who remain hospitalized for COVID-19 complications even though they are no longer COVID positive.” However, the hospital then suggests it may start inflating its count, as Rudyk suggested, “it does not provide a complete picture,” the hospital noted.