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 Biden made the announcement hours after the release of a study
https://bit.ly/3mebUYT showing that the effectiveness of COVID-19
vaccines for residents of nursing homes and long-term care
facilities, where residents are often elderly and frail, has dropped
since the Delta variant became dominant in the United States.
Residents of nursing homes have been hard hit during the pandemic,
with many facilities experiencing high death tolls - particularly
early in the public health crisis. People living in nursing homes
were among the first to be given shots after COVID-19 vaccines won
U.S. government authorization last year.
But some nursing homes have not required staff members to be
vaccinated against COVID-19 - and some employees have opted not to
get the shots amid vaccine skepticism among some Americans.
"I'm using the power of the federal government as a payer of
healthcare costs to insure we reduce those risks to our most
vulnerable seniors. These steps are all about keeping people safe
and out of harm's way," Biden said at the White House.
"If you visit, live or work in a nursing home, you should not be at
a higher risk for contracting COVID from unvaccinated employees,"
Biden added.
Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people 65 and
older. Medicaid is a state-federal health insurance program for the
poor. Many nursing homes are reliant on payments from these
programs.
Biden said that more than 130,000 residents in U.S. nursing homes
have died from COVID-19 and that vaccination rates among nursing
home employees trail the rest of the country. Biden said studies
show that having a highly vaccinated nursing home staff is
associated with at least 30 percent fewer COVID-19 cases among
residents.
The spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, which according
to CDC data accounted last month for more than 80% of new U.S.
infections, has complicated efforts to combat the pandemic in the
United States and globally.
In the new study, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention compared weekly data from 3,862 nursing homes
and long-term care facilities spanning March 1 to May 9, before
Delta became widespread, to data from 14,917 such facilities
covering June 21 to Aug. 9, when the variant was responsible for the
majority of new infections.
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 They found that efficacy of the
two-dose vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and
Moderna for preventing any coronavirus infection
- mild or severe - dropped from 74.7% to 53.1%.
Effectiveness estimates were similar for the
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, they said.
The study was published in the CDC's Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
The findings were cited by federal health
officials on Wednesday in their announcement
that COVID-19 booster shots would be made widely
available https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-start-offering-covid-19-vaccine-booster-doses-september-2021-08-18
to Americans beginning on Sept. 20, with
protection from initial vaccination waning over
time.
The first groups to receive those boosters will
include nursing home residents and other elderly
Americans, as well as people with weak immune
systems, officials said.
In a second study https://bit.ly/3AS7Cub
published in MMWR, New York State Department of
Health officials found that by late July, 65% of
New York adults had been fully vaccinated with
two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna
shots or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson shot.
Between early May and late July, the vaccines'
effectiveness for preventing new infections
dropped from 91.7% to 79.8%, the study found.
Vaccine efficacy at preventing hospitalization
held steady, ranging from 91.9% to 95.3%, it
found.
The effectiveness of the two-dose vaccines
against hospitalization lasts at least six
months, according to a separate study https://bit.ly/2Wa8kEm
by researchers in 18 U.S. states who reviewed
data from 3,089 hospitalized patients, including
1,194 with COVID-19.
(Reporting by Eric Beech and Nancy Lapid;
Editing by Michele Gershberg and Will Dunham)
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