Nursing Home COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Protect The Most Vulnerable, But Pose a Hidden Threat to Residents

Some two weeks before U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Aug. 18 that nursing homes must require their staff to get vaccinated or risk losing their Medicare and Medicaid funding, Genesis HealthCare, which manages about 250 facilities nationwide that offer long-term care and other services, had said its workers would need to be vaccinated. “The growing spread of the Delta variant makes clear that we need to increase our vaccination rates substantially to better protect our patients, residents and employees,” read an Aug. 2 memo to employees, noting that 65% of staffers were vaccinated at that point; employees had until Aug. 23 to get their shots. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In the memo, Dr. Richard Feifer, the company’s chief medical officer, said that while voluntary vaccination of staff was appropriate after the vaccines were first made available, “the pandemic is different now.” With the U.S. in the grips of a fourth wave of COVID-19 fueled by the more transmissible Delta variant, many nursing home companies and other health care providers have, like Genesis, announced that staffers must either get vaccinated or agree to regular testing, or be fired or removed from schedules. Biden’s announcement means that other nursing homes will likely follow suit, as the rule is “effectively a mandate” given the industry’s dependence on Medicaid and Medicare funding, says Dr. David Grabowski, a professor of health...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news