Nursing home residents who were not up-to-date with recommended COVID-19 vaccines had a 30% to 50% higher risk for contracting Covid compared with residents who were up-to-date with the vaccines, according to a new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Despite how successful that was, there really hasn’t been a follow up quite like that. Since then we’ve kind of left it to nursing homes themselves, to try to get staff vaccinated,” said Tamara Konetzka, co-author of a study published in JAMA focused on staff and resident vaccinations in nursing homes.
“This study supports other recent findings that the bivalent booster dose offers additional protection in persons who previously received monovalent vaccines,” the CDC said in a press release. “Nursing home residents can maximize protection against COVID-19 by receiving bivalent COVID-19 booster doses to stay up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccinations.”
National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) analyzed weekly COVID-19 case and vaccination status data from October 10, 2022 to January 8, 2023, for CMS-certified nursing homes. The percentage of residents with up-to-date COVID-19 vaccination status increased slightly during the study period from 37.5% to 48.9% across all facility sizes and geographic regions.
Earlier this month, the CDC announced federal programs to help providers vaccinate their residents with the latest boosters – although none as drastic as when the vaccinations were first introduced.
Still, CMS has said that boosting nursing home residents is a number one priority of the Biden administration.
“The rates have been steadily climbing, but this number is still too low as we head further into the winter months and face new variants of COVID-19,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure during a recent National Nursing Home Stakeholder Call. “Getting your residents up-to-date on vaccines needs to remain your number one priority.”
In December, AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care (PALTC) released a toolkit which CMS officials said would help providers find information on vaccination programs and how to address vaccine hesitancy.
For operators not already directly enrolled as providers in the CDC COVID-19 vaccination program, there are new options to sign a sub-provider agreement with CDC to administer vaccines in their facilities, along with adjusted data reporting flexibilities built in, so facilities that sign a sub-provider agreement have a 90 day temporary waiver of data reporting requirements to the IHS unless it is required by state laws.
Beyond vaccinating residents, JAMA researchers found that an increase in staff vaccination rates of 10 percentage points was associated with fewer weekly COVID-19 cases among residents, fewer weekly COVID-19 deaths among residents, and fewer weekly COVID-19 cases among staff.
Researchers estimated that if they extrapolated their findings to one year, a 10 percentage point increase in staff vaccinations would have prevented 102.9 cases per 1,000 residents, 15.6 deaths per 1,000 residents, and 21, 000 staff cases nationwide.
“Although the original vaccination campaign in nursing homes was highly successful in bringing down case and death rates, and mandates led to staff vaccination rates exceeding the thresholds we found for high effectiveness, these policies cannot remain stagnant,” the report states. “As the pandemic evolves, staff vaccination mandates need to evolve as well.”
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