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The federal government contracted with CVS, Walgreens and some other pharmacies to conduct on-site vaccine clinics at most of the nation’s nursing homes in late 2020 and early 2021, and
the efforts proved successful in getting residents their primary series of COVID-19 shots quickly. A federal mandate requiring almost all workers of nursing homes participating in Medicare
and/or Medicaid to be vaccinated with a primary series, effective as of early 2022, also greatly helped staff uptake. Both the resident and staff vaccination rates reached almost 90 percent,
with many states well above that rate, according to AARP’s analyses. But no campaign of this scale has been in place for subsequent shots. Also, no part of the federal vaccine mandate
requires workers to stay up to date with vaccinations. While some states have issued their own booster mandates for workers, or have helped coordinate administration clinics, the majority
haven’t, leaving facilities to work it out on their own. Many operators have reported battling high rates of vaccine hesitancy, a lack of awareness or confusion around the bivalent boosters,
a lack of staff to administer the shots, plus pandemic fatigue among their communities. In late December, AARP wrote to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which
regulates the country’s 15,000-plus nursing homes who participate in Medicare and/or Medicaid, urging “more action” to increase up-to-date vaccination rates. The letter called out the agency
for weakening the enforcement of its COVID-19 staff vaccination requirements and asked for heightened consequences for noncompliance. It also urged increased education on the shots and
proactive outreach to nursing homes with low up-to-date rates to establish on-site vaccination clinics. CMS said in early January that on-site vaccination clinics for residents and
staff were being conducted across the country and that the agency and its partners were continuing to reach out to nursing homes to offer assistance, education and support. “We really
hope you will take these groups up on these offers,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure during a call with nursing homes stakeholders. “Getting the updated vaccine is the most
important tool that we have to prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. And nursing home residents, who are often particularly susceptible to severe outcomes from
the virus, deserve the highest level of protection that we can offer.” More than 180,000 nursing home residents and workers have died from COVID-19 during the pandemic, which accounts
for roughly a sixth of the country’s entire COVID-19 death toll. AARP’s analysis, conducted by the AARP Public Policy Institute and the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University
in Ohio, draws primarily on data from the Nursing Home COVID-19 Public File by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Most nursing homes are federally certified and required to
submit data to the government each week. The ongoing analysis captures data only from nursing homes participating in Medicare and/or Medicaid, not from all long-term care facilities —
such as assisted living, independent living, memory care and others — as some other tallies do. An updated analysis will be released next month as new federal data becomes available. Read
more about the analysis.