Nursing homes are scrambling to vaccinate residents with coronavirus booster shots as the oncoming Omicron waves bring new urgency to the effort.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about 55% of nursing home residents receive booster shots, despite being qualified for more than two months. Authorities recently said the number had risen to 60 percent.
Infectious diseases among nursing home residents have increased in recent weeks, with an average of nearly 4,000 new cases per week. According to experts and federal authorities, many of these outbreaks occur in institutions that have not yet received booster doses.
“Comparing the COVID-19 infection rates of those who were vaccinated with two doses and those who received boosters, the incidence of illness in those who received boosters was significantly lower, and booster shots were working. Shows, “says the CDC.directed by Rochelle Warrensky
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Studies show that protection against infection with the first series of vaccines begins to weaken after about 6 months. Young and healthy people are still well protected from serious illness, but that was not the case for residents of nursing homes.
Last week, Walensky released new data showing a steadily increasing number of nursing home infections since the beginning of November among residents who received the primary series rather than boosters.
Unvaccinated residents still had the highest weekly infection rates, but boosted residents remained “stable and low”, Warensky said.
Fully vaccinated and boosted residents are one-tenth more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than those who are not vaccinated or who are fully vaccinated but not boosted. She said.
Nursing homes say they are working as quickly as possible with a new sense of urgency to boost their occupants.
David Gifford, Chief Medical Officer of the American Health Care Association, a major long-term care trading group, said the message about the need for booster shots could have contributed to the delay in launching.
A third dose of some vaccines was approved for people with weakened immunity in August, but it took until late September before a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved by federal regulators. rice field. Modena and Johnson & Johnson boosters continued in late October. By that time, many nursing home residents who were first vaccinated last winter had begun to lose some of their protection from the first vaccine.
“When the booster came out, it was recognized as a recommendation. Sometimes my immunity was weakened, but it wasn’t the unvaccinated state where the pandemic was rampant,” Gifford said. increase. “Omicron is changing the dynamics. The spread of Omicron will really make it really urgent to get a booster.”
According to Gifford, the nursing home industry began planning in the summer, assuming that boosters would be needed by the fall. He said the deployment so far is more advanced than the deployment with the first vaccine, which took three months to first inoculate the arm of a resident of a nursing home.
However, unlike the first vaccination series, boosters are not administered through a federal pharmacy partnership with CVS and Walgreens. The effort resulted in 8 million doses of vaccine, but it took time to get up and run.
Currently, the facility provides boosters through long-term care pharmacies. According to Gifford, this approach works more effectively because it is more streamlined. Nursing home providers are getting shots from onsite clinics rather than relying on the federal government to distribute to CVS or Walgreens assigned states.
However, some critics say the current system has led to a scatter shot approach, with some states and facilities succeeding and others lagging behind.
David Grabowski, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School, who studies nursing homes, said:
“I assumed this was relatively seamless, or at least somewhat orderly and somewhat consistent, but in reality it fluctuates considerably.”
West Virginia is one of the success stories.
Martin Wright Jr., CEO of the West Virginia Healthcare Association, praised the state’s efforts to partner with an independent pharmacy based in the area.
It was the same plan that worked in the first vaccine effort — West Virginia did not participate in the Federal Partnership Program.
“The day after it was fully approved by the federal government, we were able to shoot the weapon,” Wright said.
Deployment is proceeding smoothly. “But we’re seeing an increase in the number of people who want to get boosters now, because of Omicron,” he said.
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