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While nursing home residents and their caregivers were seen as a top priority for COVID-19 immunization, only 38% of nursing home staff accepted the vaccines when offered, have New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed Monday.
Anecdotal reports have been circulating for weeks that nursing home staff are turning down offers of vaccination, but these are the first figures nationwide.
“These results show that we have a lot of work to do to build confidence and also really understand the barriers to immunization in this population,” said Dr. Radhika Gharpure, lead author of the study and a member of the group. CDC vaccine work.
The report cited data from previous surveys to suggest why employees refused vaccines.
Many have expressed concern about the side effects of vaccines. Others have said they don’t want to be among the first to receive the vaccines, which were first cleared in December. Some said they did not trust the government or referred to false statements about the shooting.
It is also possible, Gharpure said, that some people were not vaccinated because they were not working when the vaccines were distributed, or because they work in multiple facilities and were only counted in one. only.
Residents, meanwhile, are much more accepting of vaccines, with 78% having received at least one vaccine, according to the new report, which looked at vaccination rates at more than 11,000 long-term care facilities across the country between December 18 and January 17.
All additional doses of vaccine are returned to states, although there are no national figures to determine the amount returned, said Dr Ruth Link-Gelles, co-author of the report and lead of the report. CDC for its Pharmaceutical Partnership for Long Term Care Program.
The Trump administration has launched the pharmacy partnership with drugstore chains CVS and Walgreens, which have agreed to make three visits to each participating nursing home, vaccinating as many people as possible the first two times and providing the required second dose. during subsequent visits.
Vaccines are provided free with pharmacies charging private insurers and Medicaid and Medicare for administrative costs.
More and more staff are signing up for photos on the second and third visit, suggesting that the reluctance may decrease at least a bit, Link-Gelles said.
This corresponds to the experience of drugstore chains.
“Overall, we are seeing increased participation from staff members on our second visits,” said Mike DeAngelis, senior director of corporate communications for CVS.
Walgreens said he was learning from the reluctance of nursing home workers.
“Although reluctance to vaccinate has been a challenge in some of these facilities, our pharmacists have played a critical role in providing education and information to help residents and staff understand the important role these vaccines will play in help the country out of this pandemic, ”Walgreens President John Standley said in a statement.
Lack of information on vaccines may explain some of the hesitation, the report concludes.
The Trump administration had promised for months that it would launch a public information campaign on vaccines but that never materialized.
A nursing home-specific ‘toolkit’ became available late last year, around the same time vaccines became available. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and private groups are also launching communication initiatives.
Link-Gelles said she understands the vaccine is new and hopes more people take it as they see it working well in others.
“Reluctance, as we have seen, has been a problem not only in this group but across the country,” she said. “Other data has shown that as people become more comfortable with vaccines and… obviously don’t see a lot of very serious adverse events, people will become more comfortable. This population is no different, hopefully.
Acceptance of health workers appears to be increasing in facilities that have done more to educate staff about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, said his hospital has gone to extraordinary lengths to provide information to staff – both as a group and as a head -headed.
It was worth it, he said, as they have “shifted the needle” of staff opinion, from almost two-thirds hesitant at the end of last year to 75% agreeing to receive. the vaccine early this year.
Now, he says, they are reaching out to those who are still hesitant, with “people in our faculty who look like them,” to try a more individual approach.
Of particular concern are false rumors that the vaccine can affect fertility, he said.
“Balderdash,” Schaffner said at the idea. “It’s amazing the nonsense that exists.”
More: Should pregnant women receive the COVID-19 vaccine? Dr Anthony Fauci says “no red flags” in the security data, so far.
There is no biological plausibility to the concern over fertility, Schaffner said. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which use a technology called messenger RNA, do not enter the nucleus of the cell and therefore cannot affect the genetic code of the cell.
“No sooner does this messenger RNA deliver its message, it disintegrates and the body gets rid of it, so that it does not persist in the body,” he said.
Also to counter rumors that the vaccine blocks fertility, Schaffner said, several hundred people participating in vaccine trials, who were asked not to get pregnant while volunteering, did so.
“So obviously you can get pregnant even if you’ve been given the vaccine,” he said, noting that pregnant women who are infected with COVID-19 are more likely to have serious illness.
But it’s important to respect the concerns of those who are reluctant to get vaccinated, he and other experts have stressed, by listening to what they say and responding to their concerns with real information.
At CommonSpirit Health, which includes 139 hospitals and more than 1,000 care sites in 21 states, about 80% of staff have already been vaccinated or say they are likely to be vaccinated, said Kathleen Sanford, chief nurse. .
Sanford attributes his organization’s high acceptance rate to surveys conducted to understand reluctance and efforts to educate staff members.
“No matter how good your education and communication are, sometimes you have to repeat yourself,” she says.
Company executives are posting pictures of themselves getting vaccinated, Sanford said, and many of them who initially said they wanted to “wait and see” how other people behaved with the vaccine begin to change their minds.
Most healthcare facilities, including nursing homes, do not require staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but they strongly encourage it and hope to achieve flu vaccination levels that exceed now generally 90%.
About 42% of workers at Ballad Health, which serves 29 counties in northeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina, have signed up for a vaccine first, said Jamie Swift, the organization’s infection prevention manager. But last Monday, 56% of the network’s healthcare team received their first dose.
“This is what we expected,” Swift said. “We knew we had people who would just wait and see how the process went and talk to their colleagues. It’s one thing to hear national statistics, it’s another to talk to someone. someone you work with about how they felt about the vaccination. “
For many, getting vaccinated is surprisingly emotional, and so is the staff who give vaccines to their colleagues.
“For so long we have faced extreme illnesses,” Swift said. “Just being able to administer the vaccine was such a healing process. People are crying.”
She saw that there is a real change in attitude after the first two people in a unit are vaccinated.
“They are frontline health workers, facing a battle that not everyone sees every day,” she said. “It’s just a feeling of relief and hope, it gives energy to this whole unit when someone gets vaccinated.
Kathleen Unroe, geriatrician and nursing home physician, helped conduct a survey in November of frontline healthcare workers across Indiana on behalf of the state Department of Health.
His study, which was cited in the new CDC report, found that 45% of the more than 8,200 health workers would consider getting the vaccine immediately after it became available, and 44% were willing to consider doing so in the future. .
While she wishes the vaccination rate was higher, Unroe said she was encouraged by the numbers. Some want to wait until they see other people, especially people they trust, take the vaccine safely.
“I understand that,” Unroe said. “If they need to take a little time to review it, I think that’s reasonable.”
Unroe said the Indiana nursing facility where she works has faced a long list of challenges over the past year in dealing with the pandemic.
But now 70% of the staff have been vaccinated, and she hopes that persistence, strong messages, and helping people talk about their fears will do most of the rest.
“The vaccine gives us hope and a way out,” Unroe said. “Then I think we’ll get there.”
Contribute: Elizabeth Way
Contact Karen Weintraub at [email protected].
Patient health and safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial contributions.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nursing Home Workers Reluctant to Get COVID Vaccine, CDC Study Finds
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