Some Idaho long-term care facilities have mandated COVID vaccines. Will more follow?
Amid a surge in COVID-19 cases statewide, multiple long-term care facilities have begun requiring vaccines for employees in a move to protect some of society’s most vulnerable people.
Genesis Healthcare, a Pennsylvania-based nursing home provider, announced last Monday that its roughly 70,000 employees would be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The company, which is one of the largest care facility providers in the nation, owns one facility in Nampa, called Sunny Ridge.
“... The growing spread of the delta variant makes clear that we need to increase our vaccination rates substantially to better protect our patients, residents and employees,” the chief executive officer of Genesis, Harry Wilson, said in a statement. “While we would have greatly preferred a strictly voluntary process, our commitment to health and safety outweighs concerns about imposing a requirement.”
The announcement comes as COVID cases are surging across the country, which health officials have tied to the highly contagious delta variant. Throughout the pandemic, nursing homes have become deadly for many Americans, since elderly and medically vulnerable residents are especially imperiled by the disease.
More than 130,000 residents of nursing homes have died of COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Nearly 2,000 facility staffers have also died.
In Idaho, cases have rocketed from a seven-day moving average of 49.7 new cases per day on July 5 to over 450 new daily cases on Wednesday, according to data from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. There have been 811 COVID-19-related deaths associated with 181 care facilities as of Friday. Those deaths account for about 37% of COVID-related deaths across the state.
At Sunny Ridge, only 47% of staff members are currently vaccinated, according to Lori Mayer, a spokesperson, while 81% of residents are vaccinated. The facility has about 100 employees and 100 residents. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 38 confirmed or probable cases among residents and staff, and two deaths, according to Health and Welfare. According to the facility’s records, there has been just one COVID-related death.
“We greatly respect and value our employees and would have preferred to not have to resort to a universal policy,” Mayer said in a statement emailed to the Idaho Statesman. “But ... the need to ensure the health and safety of our patients and residents must outweigh other considerations.”
Mayer added that the requirements are likely to become more widespread at nursing homes, meaning that employees hesitant to get vaccinated might not be able to avoid a mandate by working at another facility.
So far, nine facilities in Idaho owned by three companies have mandated vaccines for employees, according to the Idaho Health Care Association. The Statesman has thus far been unable to verify what other facilities have done so.
“There will be more and more (facilities that mandate vaccines) over the coming weeks and months as the virus keeps spreading,” Robert Vande Merwe, the trade association’s executive director, told the Idaho Statesman by phone.
Vande Merwe said he has visited two facilities with employee vaccine mandates owned by an out-of-state company that operates four facilities in Idaho. At those two facilities, where the vaccination requirement deadline had recently passed, one didn’t lose any staff and the other lost just two employees.
“It wasn’t too painful,” he said.
Still, the IHCA does not currently endorse vaccine mandates out of a fear that it could worsen staffing shortages, which have beset facilities across the country throughout the pandemic. But Vande Merwe said the vaccines, which have been proved to be safe and effective, are the best means of protecting nursing facility residents and staff.
“(Our employers) believe that vaccines are the only way to get through this pandemic,” he said. “It’s the only way out.”
When the vaccines receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which might happen soon, it likely will embolden more businesses considering vaccine mandates, officials have said. The COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. have so far received emergency use authorization, which the FDA says still requires rigorous safety testing.
Recent nationwide polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation have found that about 30% of unvaccinated adults say they would be more likely to get vaccinated once there is full approval.
On July 28, the American Health Care Association did not endorse mandatory vaccines at all facilities, saying instead, in a statement, that it supports greater vaccine safety education, as well as supporting those providers that choose to adopt the requirement.
Still, a certain percentage of the roughly 8,000 employees at some 400 long-term care facilities in Idaho remain reluctant to get the vaccine, Vande Merwe added.
About 74% of Idahoans age 65 and older are fully vaccinated, compared to 46.3% of residents 12 and older, according to Health and Welfare. Nationwide, those figures increase to 80.3% and 58.4%, respectively.
“We’ve educated and informed and begged, but half of Idaho doesn’t want to be vaccinated, so about half our staff feel the same way,” Vande Merwe said.
