President Joe Biden announced Wednesday all nursing home staff has to be vaccinated for COVID-19 in order to continue receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funding. The video above shows President Biden making the announcement, as well discussing U.S. health officials’ plans to offer booster shots to all American adults starting Sept. 20.
The new mandate could take effect as soon as next month. “Studies show that highly vaccinated nursing home staff is associated with at least 30 percent less COVID-19 cases among long term care residents,” Biden said. “At the same time, vaccination rates among nursing home staff significantly trail the rest of the country.”
Hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers are not vaccinated, according to federal data. This is despite nursing homes bearing the brunt of the early part of the pandemic. “More than 130,000 residents in nursing homes have sadly, over the period of this virus passed away,” Biden said.
In addition, nursing home workers were among the first in the country to be eligible for the vaccine.
Mark Parkinson, President and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, praised the Biden decision. However, Parkinson then challenged Biden to go further. “Vaccination mandates for health care personnel should be applied to all health care settings,” Parkinson said. “Without this, nursing homes face a disastrous workforce challenge.”
This latest effort is part of several initiatives the Biden administration has made lately to boost a sluggish vaccination rate. In the past few weeks, Biden has required millions of federal workers to prove they are vaccinated or face weekly testing. His administration has also moved toward requiring vaccines for the military as soon as next month.
The effort seems to be paying off. America’s rate of new vaccinations has nearly doubled over the past month. Almost 200 million Americans have now received at least one dose of the vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the White House COVID-19 Response Team said that number would surpass 200 million by the end of Wednesday.
About 80 million Americans are eligible but haven’t yet been vaccinated, according to the White House.
