Little promotion and a lack of federal support for distribution could be suppressing COVID-19 vaccine booster rates in nursing homes, according to several experts.
Currently, 73.4% of residents and 40.5% of staff members have received their booster doses at nursing homes nationwide. Those figures are below the 87.3% and 84.9% rates for residents and staff, respectively, for initial vaccine regimens.
A key difference in the rates is that many providers received distribution help thanks to the federal partnership during the initial vaccine rollout in December 2020, according to Harvard healthcare policy expert David Grabowski, Ph.D.
“When it came time to do the booster rollout, this was really left up to the nursing homes to handle the booster clinics,” Grabowski said in a Thursday report. He noted that facilities haven’t been prioritized for vaccines, resulting in low coverage rates.
“They do a flu vaccine every year for staff, and residents and there was some thought that they could do this,” he added. “Some did, but there was also some really slow rollout that highlighted the haves and have nots across nursing homes.”
Some experts have criticized the lack of promotion boosters have gotten in comparison to the initial rollout, despite recent studies showing that a booster shot better protects adults from hospitalization.
“This shouldn’t be surprising because a lot of work ultimately was needed in the initial vaccination rollout,” geriatrician Michael Wasserman, M.D., told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News on Monday. “There was no reason to think that boosters would take any less effort. Furthermore, the initial rollout was comprehensively planned, and boosters did not have the same type of plan.”
Wasserman added that there’s still too much misinformation out there regarding vaccine boosters.
“Nursing home staff continue to die from COVID-19, and those numbers increased once again during the omicron wave. Unfortunately, we’re between a rock and a hard place. Without mandates, there is definitely a significant percentage of staff who have chosen not to be boosted,” he said. “Some of them will die. Others will infect residents, although the risk to boosted residents is now much closer to typical flu risk. On the other hand, mandates risk having staff leave, although it appears that the numbers who are leaving for this reason are not that high. At the very least, staff who aren’t boosted should be required to wear an N-95 while at work.”
