C​​​​OLUMBUS, Ohio — Tens of thousands of health care workers in Ohio had until Friday to get vaccinated for COVID-19, unless they received an exemption.

Three major hospitals in the state had Oct. 1 deadlines for staff to show they've completed vaccination — UC Health and the Christ Hospital in Cincinnati and Nationwide Children’s in Columbus. They are the first large hospitals in the state to have vaccine requirements take effect. A deadline is also coming up Monday for Dublin-based pharmaceutical distributor Cardinal Health.

According to state data, the four companies collectively employ about 36,000 Ohioans.

On Thursday, a district judge allowed Oct. 1 vaccine mandates to take effect, denying an effort by an attorney representing a group of Cincinnati-area hospital employees to get a preliminary injunction against UC Health and the Christ Hospital's vaccine mandates. 

Hospital officials said they are processing the large number of vaccine records that have been received from their employees, stating that they'll provide updates when they know how many staff members have gotten the vaccine. 

While August announcements of health care vaccine requirements prompted protests in Ohio, some employees said they are glad the deadline is here.

Danielle, a 29-year-old analyst whose employer is among these four companies, said she’ll feel safer in the workplace if everyone is vaccinated. For a little while longer, her team is working remotely.

“It’s good to know that whenever we do actually go to the office, which I’ve never actually worked in, the people around me will be vaccinated and most likely I’ll be safe — at least from those people,” she said, asking to withhold her last name to speak freely about an employment matter.

Danielle was immunized in April, and while she said she understands peoples’ concerns about side effects, she said everyone should be much more concerned about the virus.  

“The choice is to get the vaccine and keep working, or don’t get the vaccine and get a new job that doesn’t require you to have the vaccine,” she said. 

Hospital officials told Spectrum News it was too early to comment on any disciplinary action that might be taken against those who do not satisfy the vaccine requirements.

Officials with UC Health said it will take some time for the health system to go through a large amount of documents. 

“UC Health is still processing the documentation associated with our COVID-19 employee vaccination requirement. This process includes reviewing and authenticating documentation submitted by more than 10,000 employees,” spokesperson Amanda Nageleisen said.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital was reporting a vaccination rate of “approximately 90%” for its staff, spokesperson Danielle Warner said Thursday. 

“We expect this number to continue to increase over time as some staff, for various reasons, have temporary exemptions,” she said.

The Christ Hospital has approved more than 400 requests for exemptions.

The Christ Hospital said Thursday that it wasn’t able to comment “since the vaccine requirement is not yet in place."

In a Sept. 27 court filing, the Christ Hospital said it has granted 86.7% (104 of 120) requests for medical exemptions and 87% (348 of 400) requests for religious exemptions.

Five Cincinnati health systems are facing a legal challenge to the vaccine mandate from employees who are represented by attorney Glenn Feagan, who did not respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Black denied the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the mandates from going into effect. 

Black said the plaintiff’s claims were based on “unsupported conspiracy theories” and lies about the vaccines. 

The Ohio employees who sued were originally part of an August suit against St. Elizabeth Medical Center, which is based in Kentucky. The plaintiffs ultimately split off the Ohio defendants and tried to challenge the mandate in a state court with a filing against five Cincinnati health systems in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas. However, the hospitals successfully moved the case back to federal court. 

Black's order siding with the hospitals cites U.S. District Judge David Bunning’s similar ruling last week in favor of St. Elizabeth’s vaccine mandate.

Two Ohio children’s hospitals that had originally set Oct. 1 vaccination deadlines have since postponed the deadlines.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital informed its employees last week that the hospital was pushing its deadline back to Nov. 1. Officials said the decision was related to the burden of processing a large number of documents.

Thousands of employees have submitted vaccination records since Cincinnati Children’s Aug. 5 announcement of the requirement, a statement from the hospital said. 

“Those records had to be entered manually, which created a backlog. While we have largely caught up on this data entry, hundreds of records continue to be submitted by employees, which has delayed up-to-date reporting,” hospital officials said. 

The hospital also said it made sense to give employees a bit more time to get vaccinated, so that they could process the recent developments of the Pfizer vaccine getting full approval and the Biden administration announcing vaccine requirements for health care workers.

Dayton Children’s said in a statement this week that is was delaying the implementation of its requirement until Dec. 1. The hospital cited the “unprecedented surge in respiratory infections and RSV in young children,” according to a statement.

Dayton-based Kettering Health also initially set an early October vaccine deadline that would have taken effect Monday, but the hospital pushed the deadline to Dec. 1 back in August, shortly after the mandate was announced.

Outside of Ohio, some hospitals have begun terminating staff who failed to meet vaccine deadlines, but the numbers have been low.

A spokesperson for North Carolina-based Novant Health, which serves North and South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, said Tuesday that about 175 unvaccinated employees across 15 hospitals and 800 clinics have been fired. The company’s compliance rate for its 35,000 workers, however, is more than 99%. 

UC Health said that requiring COVID-19 vaccination is in line with its policies for other communicable diseases such as influenza and a logical move at a time when the hospital is busy with unvaccinated patients. 

“Science has demonstrated that COVID-19 vaccinations have proven to be safe and effective. Overwhelmingly, they protect people from hospitalization, ICU-level care and death,” Nageleisen said.