President Biden Announces COVID-19 Vaccine Mandatory For Nursing Home Workers
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that his govt will require nursing home workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition for those facilities to continue to receive federal funding from Medicare and Medicaid.
Joe Biden unveiled the new policy in a White House speech Wednesday afternoon as the government continues to seek ways to use the warrants to encourage those who oppose vaccination.
“If you visit, live, or work in a nursing home, you should not be at high risk of contracting COVID from unvaccinated employees,” Biden said.
The new mandate in the form of an upcoming regulation from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could take effect next month.
Hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers are unvaccinated, as per the federal data, despite these facilities being hardest hit by the first COVID-19 outbreak and their staff among the first in the country to be eligible for vaccines.
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It comes as the Joe Biden administration tries to increase the cost of those yet to be vaccinated after months of incentives and giveaways that have proven insufficient to get tens of millions of Americans to roll up their sleeves.
Over the past three weeks, Biden has forced millions of federal employees to confirm their immunization status or face onerous new requirements, with even stricter requirements for federal health workers on primary health workers online and administering vaccinations for the military starting next month.
Biden also celebrated companies that have required vaccines for their own employees and encouraged others to follow them, highlighting local vaccine regulations as a requirement for daily activities such as eating indoors.
The new efforts appear to be paying off as the national rate of new vaccines has nearly doubled over the past month.
More than 200 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine, as per the White House, but about 80 million Americans are eligible but have not yet been vaccinated.
Mark Parkinson, president, and CEO of the American Association for Healthcare and the National Center for Assisted Living welcomed Biden’s move but urged him to go further.
“Vaccination orders for medical personnel should apply to all health facilities,” he said.
“Without it, nursing homes face a disastrous professional challenge.”
Last year, CMS used a similar regulatory body to ban most visitors from entering nursing homes in order to protect residents.
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