Beleaguered nursing homes prepare for monumental task of vaccinating residents and staff

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Sat, 2020-12-05 11:41 — mike kraft

First shipments of coronavirus vaccine will fall short

Beleaguered nursing homes prepare for monumental task of vaccinating residents and staff Building on their experience of delivering flu shots, the pharmacy chains are laying plans to administer the vaccines to 50,000 residential settings across the country. Christopher Rowland, Will Englund Washington Post

The United States is about to embark on the mammoth challenge of giving vaccines to 3 million residents of nursing homes and assisted-living centers, which have struggled to protect elderly people in their charge as well as caregivers from coronavirus infections, resulting in more than 100,000 deaths.

But even as retail pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens lay ambitious plans under a government agreement to deliver the first available doses to this most vulnerable population, health-care advocates are raising concerns about logistical and ethical challenges that could complicate the task.

Building on the experience they have delivering flu shots, the pharmacy chains are expected to administer the vaccines — which must be delivered in two doses a number of weeks apart — to 50,000 residential settings across the country.

The pharmacies said they are coordinating with individual states and nursing homes to decide where to go when the first batches of shots begin to arrive, later in December. The shots will be free for patients, paid for by the federal government. The drugstores and other providers that administer shots covered by Medicare or Medicaid will get a $45 fee for each two-shot regimen.

Federal government to require testing of nursing home staff

But the barriers to a successful vaccination campaign are formidable.

A federal advisory panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recommended that nursing-home residents and staff be included among the first groups of people to get the vaccine along with health-care workers because they account for a disproportionately high number of coronavirus deaths.

Millions of staff members also need to be vaccinated, many of them low-wage workers and members of minority communities with a historical distrust of vaccines. Staff members are the most common source of infection brought from outside into nursing homes, according to multiple studies. Any effort that does not make them a priority is doomed to fail, officials say....

“It’s just a lot of pieces that have to be put together for this to roll out smoothly,” said Tricia Neuman, a senior vice president at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which focuses on health care and has been tracking deaths among residents and workers in long-term care facilities. “There couldn’t be a higher-risk, priority population.” ...

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