President Joe Biden announced a new policy on Wednesday afternoon, requiring nursing home staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition for these facilities to obtain medical insurance and Medicaid funds.
The plan will affect 15,000 nursing homes, employ up to 1.3 million people, and may take effect in September. Biden also requires federal employees to be vaccinated because he tries to vaccinate as many Americans as possible. He also encouraged states to provide residents with $100 per person through emergency recovery plans to incentivize vaccination.
“If you visit, live or work in a nursing home, you should not have a high risk of contracting COVID from an employee who has never been vaccinated,” Biden says Address in the White House.
About 60% According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 8 nursing home staff have been fully vaccinated. Biden has asked all health care and nursing home staff employed by the Veterans Affairs Administration to be vaccinated.
More than 200 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 80 million of those eligible have not yet been vaccinated.
“When we see the spread of Delta and other COVID cases, it is really important to ensure that those who take care of our most vulnerable people are vaccinated,” said Carol Johnson, A senior official of the White House Covid-19 Response Team.
Biden requires nursing homes to vaccinate their employees to maintain medical insurance and medical assistance funds. Industry groups are concerned about the outflow of workers (USD):https://t.co/gZzaL2xf0t
— Lauren Clason (@LaClason) August 18, 2021
In the seven states where less than half of nursing home staff were vaccinated, the number of weekly cases in the week ending August 3 was 7.9 times that of the week ending June 27.
At the same time, states with more than 60% of vaccination cases reported in the week as of August 1 were only three times higher than those reported in the last week of June.
