Scattered outbreaks are largely blamed on unvaccinated staff members.
“There is this notion among some that vaccines were administered in long-term care, so we’re done, and that would be a perilous mistake,” said Dr. David Gifford, chief medical officer for the American Health Care Association, a national nursing home trade association, in a recent statement. “Nursing homes and assisted living communities have a constant flow of new residents, whether coming from the hospital or the community, and many of them haven’t been vaccinated yet.
A March outbreak involving a variant at a Kentucky nursing home, where most residents had been vaccinated for Covid-19, was traced to an infected, unvaccinated worker, according to a CDC report. Among the 46 cases identified, 26 residents and 20 workers became infected, including 18 residents and four workers who were fully vaccinated 14 days before the outbreak.
Given staffing shortages around the country, there’s been a hesitance among long-term care providers to mandate vaccinations for their workers, said Dr. Vivian Leung, director of the state's Department of Health's Healthcare Associated Infections Program. “Throughout our network, we are seeing onesies and twosies, mostly with employees, though, that have not been vaccinated. That’s really where we’re seeing them,” Brown said of the infections. If a staff member tests positive, he said, buildings are put under quarantine and visits are put on hold while another round of staff testing is conducted. Unvaccinated staff are being tested regularly.
But Debra Ellis, whose 88-year-old wife Jackie lives in a Meriden, Conn. nursing home, said the rules still differ by facility. Until recently, she had been frustrated by the strict visitation limits, including sudden multi-day shutdowns when staff members have tested positive. Both she and her wife are vaccinated.
"She could get up and walk a very small distance around the room to move to the bed to a chair or whatever,” she said. “She’s no longer able to do that.”
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Covid summer: Fauci warns US not to ‘declare victory’ despite lowest rates in a year‘We don’t want to declare victory prematurely,’ expert tells the Guardian while 2021 has seen more global cases than all of 2020 ‘The more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer,’ Fauci said. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, has warned it is too early to declare victory against Covid-19 as cases fall in the country to the lowest rates since last June. “We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go,” Fauci told the Guardian in an interview. “But the more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer.” The Memorial Holiday weekend marks the unofficial start of summer in the US, and for the at least 50% of the adult population that is fully vaccinated, it could usher in a season of maskless barbecues and trips to the beach. Daily coronavirus cases have dropped 53% since 1 May, according to Johns Hopkins University data, but the rates are still high in the unvaccinated population and cases are growing globally. Already there have been more global cases in 2021 than in all of 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University data. “As long as there is some degree of activity throughout the world, there’s always a danger of variants emerging and diminishing somewhat the effectiveness of our vaccines,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid). The US has been under pressure to provide greater aid in global vaccine efforts and has in recent weeks committed to donate 80m vaccines in addition to the $4bn donation its pledged to Covax, the global vaccine-sharing scheme. Fauci said more help could be on the way. “We are discussing right now at various levels about how we might be able to up production to get vaccine doses from the companies that are already making them for us, get more doses that will be able to be distributed to lower- and
Read more »
Hundreds of COVID deaths still occurring each week in U.S. nursing homesData shows that the number of nursing home deaths related to COVID-19 is down from 10,675 in the first two weeks of January to 472 in the first two weeks of May.
Read more »
'Like a Dream': Latin Americans Head to U.S. for COVID ShotsRIO DE JANEIRO — Florencia Gonzalez Alzaga, a photographer from Buenos Aires, hatched her plan to fly to the United States for a coronavirus vaccine after the subject came up in her Zoom book club. Juan Pablo Bojacá, an Instagram influencer from Colombia who specializes in frugal travel, urged his 137,000 followers to give it a try, posting a step-by-step video guide that showed him clearing passport control in Miami. José Acevedo, a real estate agent in Paraguay, was stunned by how easy the whole thing was in Las Vegas. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Frustrated with the lagging pace of vaccine campaigns at home and seeing a surplus of doses in the United States — where tens of millions of Americans have opted not to get inoculated — wealthy and middle-class Latin Americans with American tourist visas have been flocking to the United States in recent weeks to score a COVID-19 shot. “It’s like a dream,” said Gonzalez, who got her shot in Miami in April. The access has proved a bonanza for the privileged in countries where the virus continues to take a brutal toll — even if many, including those who are benefiting, struggle with the fact that vaccine tourism exacerbates the inequality that has worsened the pandemic’s toll. Sean Simons, a spokesman for the ONE Campaign, which works to eradicate disease and poverty, said vaccine travel could have serious unintended consequences, and urged nations with vaccine surpluses to funnel them instead through a World Health Organization vaccine distribution system known as COVAX. “Millionaires and billionaires traveling across continents or oceans to get a vaccine, usually twice, means greater exposure, higher likelihood of variants spreading and access only for the most elite,” he said. The Biden administration said this month that it would give 80 million vaccine doses by the end of June to countries that are scrambling to vaccinate their people. Still, as success stories of Latin Americans getting t
Read more »
South Africa races to halt third Covid wave as its economic outlook improvesSouth African economic activity has rebounded quicker than expected, but the country is racing to roll out Covid-19 vaccines as a third wave looms.
Read more »
Greece Rushes to Vaccinate Islanders Against Covid-19 to Save Summer Tourist SeasonMost countries are asking their oldest residents to get a Covid-19 vaccine first. In Greece, that priority now includes residents of its island tourist destinations.
Read more »