In the United States, coronavirus vaccines are up, and nursing home residents and staff will be the first people to receive it.
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The vaccine's initial supplies will not be enough for the nation's estimated 21 million health care employees and 3 million long-term care people. The two clusters a federal advisory committee suggested prioritizing, pushing states to resolve who should go ahead of the others.
While almost all states are making nursing home residents and staff a top priority, their vaccine distribution plans vary. There are substantial challenges to pass before the vaccines are broadly administered to this high-risk, hit the hardest population, by the pandemic.
To distribute the vaccination to nursing homes and open on-site clinics to vaccinate residents, the administration has contracted CVS and Walgreens, and both are giants. However, it's far from the snag this mass immunization effort faces.
Public health executives are receiving diffidence among some workers and residents and their family members about getting a shot since it has not been adequately tested on elderly, physically frail people.
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Given their vulnerability to the virus, groups representing long-term care facilities are committed that staff and residents must be at the very frontline. As long-term care facilities were related to more than 100,000 Covid-19 deaths, about 40% of the total fatalities from the infection in the United States as of November, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research organization.
On a press call on Monday, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, Mark Parkinson, stated, "If long-term residents and those employees aren't vaccinated first, it is an enormous public health blunder." He added, "If states put others first, it doesn't mean the vaccines will be wasted. But the single best way to very quickly reduce the number of Covid deaths is to get the population vaccinated who is dying."
Also, each state has to plan out where nursing home staff members must go to get vaccinated. The advocacy group for long-term care providers, the American Health Care Association, said that vaccine clinics are projected to be up and running inside nursing home facilities by the end of December, pending federal approval. Thus, many nursing home residents and workers who want to be vaccinated soonest have to wait in some states.
For example, in Utah, state health officers will send the vaccine first to the five large hospitals' frontline workers, and long-term care residents and staff will be vaccinated afterward, along with other health care workers. While in Mississippi, police, firefighters, and other first responders, in addition to hospital workers, will get the first vaccines before people in nursing homes.
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On the other hand, in New York, its initial batch of doses will go to nursing home staff members and residents.
Some other key details are still under negotiations and are working out. State health officials said, "Though many states agreed that staff members of long-term care facilities would be vaccinated at their workplaces, they must also prepare that they may have to travel to a hospital or other site for the shot, especially if they are prioritized ahead of long-term care residents."
