Vaccinations help reduce Covid cases by over 80% among US nursing home staff and residents

Covid cases fall over 80% among US nursing home staff and residents Despite vaccine hesitancy, figures show a big drop in infections – giving hope that, after a brutal year, an end is in sight Melissa Bailey and Shoshana Dubnow the Guardian

After the rollout of Covid vaccines, the number of new Covid cases among nursing home staff fell 83% – from 28,802 for the week ending 20 December to 4,764 for the week ending 14 February, data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services shows.

New Covid-19 infections among nursing home residents fell even more steeply, by 89%, in that period, compared with 58% in the general public, CMS and Johns Hopkins University data show.

These numbers suggest that “the vaccine appears to be having a dramatic effect on reducing cases, which is extremely encouraging,” said Beth Martino, spokesperson for the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, an industry group.

“It’s a big relief for me,” said Phillips, who works at the North Beach Rehabilitation Center outside Miami. Now, she said, she’s urging hesitant co-workers and anyone else who can to “go out and take the vaccination”.

After a brutal year in which the pandemic killed half a million Americans, despite unprecedented measures to curb its spread – including mask-wearing, physical distancing, school closures and economic shutdowns – the vaccines are giving hope that an end is in sight.

National figures on healthcare worker infections in other settings are hard to come by.

Research in other countries suggests that vaccines have led to big drops in infection. A study of publicly funded hospitals in England indicated that a first dose was 72% effective at preventing Covid-19 among workers after 21 days and 86% effective seven days after the second shot.

Lost on the Frontline, a year-long data and reporting project by KHN and the Guardian, is investigating over 3,500 Covid deaths of US healthcare workers. The monthly number has been declining since December, but deaths often lag weeks or months behind infections.

Along with other healthcare workers, nursing home staff and residents were first in line to get vaccines in December because elderly people in congregate settings are among the most vulnerable to infection: more than 125,000 residents have died of Covid, CMS data shows, while over 550,000 nursing home staff members have tested positive and more than 1,600 have died.

Yet the vaccination rate among staffers is far lower than that of residents. When the first clinics ran from mid-December to mid-January, a median of 78% of nursing home residents took a dose, while the median for staff was only 38%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now several nursing home associations said the rate of staff vaccination has been climbing, based on informal surveys.

Vaccine uptake by nursing home residents has been “very promising,” said Dr Morgan Katz, a specialist in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University who is advising Covid responses in nursing homes. “I do think this is a huge contributing factor” to the drop in staff cases, she said.