Health care leaders push back against proposed ban on vaccine requirements in hospitals

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) — Gov. Kevin Stitt has a letter on his desk tonight from 20 Republican representatives.

The letter, written by Hominy representative Sean Roberts, says that health care workers being forced to get the COVID vaccine violates their "liberty and justice for all."

They say "If we do not protect the individual's right to chose what goes in their body, we no longer live in a free society."

But the Oklahoma Alliance for Healthy Families says Roberts is focusing on the wrong group of people having something go into their body.

"People that are going through traumatic parts of their lives. People with cancer, immune compromised. If they are being treated by someone who is not vaccinated and happens to be positive, it creates a bigger problem for them," said Sam Blackstock, vice chair of OAHF.

Blackstock says the focus should really be on the patients, who have the right to a clean and safe environment for their healthcare treatments.

"We want to ensure that we maintain standards to the best of our abilities. To make those safe environments. Therefore, those environments are smoke free, those environments are as germ free as we can make them," said Blackstock.

They see vaccinations against a virus that has killed more than 7,000 Oklahomans as a common sense move in a health setting.

Some have been more blunt. Dr. George Monks saying the idea of banning vaccine requirements for healthcare workers "dumb".

If the Governor issues an executive order, he believes more will die unnecessarily of a preventable disease.

Of the 20 lawmakers signed on, one had medical experience, as a nurse in intensive care more than twenty years ago, and Roberts, the author of the letter, holds a masters degree in physical therapy from the University of Oklahoma.

They say their effort is to either get the executive order, or have the Governor call a special session to end what they call medical tyranny. Efforts to pass similar bills in this year's session all failed.