As colder temperatures bring flu season and the likelihood of higher Covid cases, the nation’s most frail population — and the workers that care for them — can only benefit from a fall Covid booster campaign, researchers say.
Federal dollars to pay for a campaign, however, have dwindled.
A recent study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund found a fall campaign touting boosters – bivalent or otherwise – could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Specifically, a campaign that would reach a similar number of people to an influenza vaccination campaign from 2020 to 2021 would prevent more than 75,000 deaths and more than 745,000 hospitalizations, generating $44 billion in direct medical cost savings by the end of March 2023.
Only 55.7% and 42% of SNF residents and staff, respectively, have received boosters, according to data released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as of Sept. 18.
If vaccination continues at its current pace, the country faces a potential winter surge of Covid infections, resulting in 16,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths per day by March 2023, Commonwealth researchers predicted.
There have been 158,070 confirmed nursing home resident Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to CMS; total SNF staff deaths has reached 2,707. Nursing home deaths make up 23% of total Covid deaths in the country as of January 2022, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) analysis of CMS data.
A call for campaigning
Such findings are in line with what nursing home leaders have been saying anecdotally for months — most recently at a Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing held on Sept. 21.
David Grabowski, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and witness during the hearing, urged members of Congress to increase vaccination levels in nursing homes through mandating boosters, among other efforts to bolster the workforce.
Such recommendations were met with little follow-up during the hearing, what Grabowski felt was a missed opportunity to “really drill down on a set of ideas.”
The bivalent boosters were authorized in September by the FDA as protection against the original strain of Covid along with the Omicron variant and subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. Boosters are available for anyone who has completed their primary vaccination series and has not received additional doses for at least two months.
While natural and vaccine-induced protection has been proven to be transient, booster uptake in the U.S. since the Omicron wave has diminished, according to the study. Federal financing toward booster campaigns hasn’t been replenished either; that’s largely due to a perception that the pandemic is over, Commonwealth researchers found.
Of the general population, only 36% of people aged 50 and older have received their second booster dose, and the rate of vaccination, including boosters, has declined to less than 100,000 doses administered daily as of Sept. 12.
While that number gradually ticks back up as people get updated booster shots for the fall, Commonwealth researchers say a lack of federal funding “threatens to undermine any goal of high coverage.”
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