Hospital administrators in Greater Cincinnati do not know how many staff and volunteers are already vaccinated against COVID-19, officials said Tuesday, just days after announcing they would require them to get the shot this fall.

“We simply don’t know,” said Mercy Health's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Stephen Feagins. “Many vaccines were given certainly by us to employees, but there are many sites of vaccination: pharmacies, mass vaccinations sites.”

Last week, all six hospital systems from our area said they will require staff and volunteers to get the vaccine.

University of Cincinnati Medical Center created the pilot program to vaccinate workers. Spokesperson Amanda Nageleisen said the team built the program quickly to slow the virus. Because they were treating staff as patients, those records are now private.

Nageleisen says UC Medical Center knows how many doses it administered when the vaccine was available to only healthcare workers. She says that data indicated a high number of staff vaccinated. However, she says when the vaccine became available to the general public, administrators were unable to decipher which patients were healthcare workers and which were part of the general public.

Doctors say they’ll have data when mandates kick in this fall and employees are required to report their status.

“There are a lot, a lot of individuals who would actually prefer to work in an environment where they know everyone is vaccinated,” said Dr. Feagins.

Health and Human Services requested that hospitals report the number weekly starting Jan. 13. WCPO was still waiting for Greater Cincinnati data as of late Tuesday afternoon.

WCPO asked Mercy Health, Tri-Health, Christ Hospital, University of Cincinnati, and UC Children’s if they have followed guidance to report it but did not immediately hear back.

“Asking people for vaccine cards is going to take time,” said Dominic Mendiola.

Mendiola is a labor representative for the Ohio Nurses Association. The union represents 1,700 nurses at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. The local chapter there is called the Registered Nurses Association of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

“We’re surveying our members to try to see voluntarily who wants to disclose to us who is vaccinated,” said Mendiola. So far, 70 percent of survey respondents are vaccinated, he said.

When he's sick, 61-year-old Wayne Hensley puts his life in the hands of the St. Elizabeth Healthcare team in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. When he was in urgent care two months ago, he hoped everyone he was paying to treat him could prove they were fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Now that St. Elizabeth — along with the region's five other major hospital systems — have announced they will require all staff to be inoculated against the virus, Hensley said he was shocked to hear some nurses are protesting the mandate.

"I don't know if it's a game or what," Hensley told WCPO Tuesday. "They need to get a shot."

A group of nurses has planned to protest the decision Tuesday outside the Northern Kentucky hospital's Edgewood campus. Their primary reason for resisting the vaccination, they said, is because none of the three available in the U.S. has received full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

READ MORE: Hospitals, unions bargaining after vaccine mandate

"Why are we rushing this?" nurse Taylor Brenner said. "Why all of a sudden did every hospital in the Tri-State mandate this all in one day? It's just, it's scary."

National health officials have said they expect the FDA to give full approval status to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine later this summer or in early fall.

Still, Hensley remains convinced health care providers should get their shot.

"Everybody else is getting it," he said.

Patty Keith of Southgate, though, said she's not so concerned if her doctor or nurse isn't vaccinated.

"It does not matter to me," she said. "I already know they're wearing masks, their gloves, everything that they're wearing, that they have to wear already to take care of patients. So, I would be OK with that."

Cincinnati resident John Wabbington agreed with Keith but said he hopes hospital staff will at least consider getting their shots.

"I would just hope the people would actually think about it, think what's good for the patients themselves," he said.

The group of nurses planned to protest from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday in Edgewood.