WASHINGTON — Federal health officials on Thursday pressed nursing home workers to get their booster shots amid a spike in COVID-19 cases among staffers and...
Nursing homes are a testing ground for President Joe Biden’s assertion that the United States is much better prepared to handle a surging virus than it was last winter. Although residents are a tiny proportion of the population, they represent a disproportionate share of Americans who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this year, the advent of vaccines brought the virus under control in nursing homes and allowed them to reopen to visitors.
With medical experts advising that a booster shot is critical to defend against omicron, Becerra said only 57% of nursing home residents and 25% of staff have gotten boosters. That’s clearly behind a booster rate of nearly 66% among people age 65 or older and about 45% for the adult population, according to statistics from the White House.
“Once again nursing homes are really the ground zero,” said Harvard health policy professor David Grabowski, who has tracked the impact of the pandemic on residents and staff. “How well we do in combating this virus can often be discerned by just looking at the nursing homes.” Vaccines enabled nursing homes to weather the delta variant surge earlier this year, and timely booster shots should go a long way toward blocking omicron. “The more vaccines and boosters we have, the more lives we are going to save over the course of the winter,” Grabowski said.COVID-19 outbreaks in Mississippi nursing homes have almost doubled in the past week, and officials say that indicates the state is probably heading into another major surge of virus cases and hospitalizations.
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