As senior living and care facilities wrestle with the dilemma of requiring workers to be vaccinated, a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reinforces the idea that higher vaccination rates could be the antidote to another wave of coronavirus outbreak in congregate settings.
According to the study, nurses and aides are the industry’s least likely workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
“One concern is that nurses and aides in this sample, who have the most patient contact, had the lowest vaccination coverage. COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred in LTCFs [long-term care facilities] in which residents were highly vaccinated, but transmission occurred through unvaccinated staff members,” the CDC reported.
Charlene Harrington, RN, Ph.D., a nursing home researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, told AARP: “I am very concerned about the low staff vaccination rates and believe they are associated with the recent [nursing home] outbreaks we are seeing across the country. You would hope for rates of 80 to 90% for staff and residents.”
The nursing home industry struggles with vaccine hesitancy. A growing number of long-term care providers are requiring COVID-19 for staff members. Some operators are concerned, however, about losing staff if vaccines are mandated as a condition of employment.
In some areas, the decision is out of the hands of individual companies. In Denver, for example, Mayor Michael Hancock (D) announced Monday that all city and county employees, along with private-sector employees in high-risk settings such as skilled nursing facilities, will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sep. 30.
Not everyone is sure that mandating the vaccine is the way to go. At Holly Heights Care Center in Denver, for instance, 25% of the staff is still unvaccinated, and executive director Janet Snipes told the NBC affiliate Channel 9 News that she is concerned that some employees could quit rather than get the shot.
“I am a little hesitant though because we are very close to Arapahoe County, and employees could choose to go get a job in a different location,” especially as long-term care facilities are struggling with staffing shortages, she told the television network.
The president of the Colorado Health Care Association expressed similar concerns in general, Channel 9 reported.
“Especially in those settings where you have 50 or 60% vaccination rate, if a mandate came through and those employees chose to leave long term care, then we are in a position where it is very difficult to hire,” said Doug Farmer, president of CHCA, told Channel 9.
