DOH to require more skilled nursing facilities’ workers get vaccinated
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced Thursday that it expects all of the commonwealth’s skilled nursing facilities to have at least 80% of staff vaccinated for COVID-19 by Oct. 1 in order to protect vulnerable patients.
Currently, only 12.5% of facilities have staff vaccinated at or above 80%, which the DOH said is not enough to prevent future outbreaks of the virus.
“As COVID-19 cases rise, we are committed to helping prevent outbreaks by stopping COVID-19 from entering a nursing home in the first place, and one of the best ways we can do this is through vaccinating staff in skilled nursing facilities,” said DOH Executive Deputy Secretary Keara Klinepeter.
In Washington County, seven of 12 skilled nursing facilities have at least 80% of staff vaccinated, according to the DOH. In Fayette County, four of seven skilled nursing facilities meet the 80% guideline. Neither of Greene County’s two skilled nursing facilities has reached the target.
Klinepeter believes that getting 80% of nursing home staff vaccinated “is aggressive, but achievable.”
“As we have seen over the past 17 months, COVID-19 kills. Getting vaccinated is the most effective measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and ensure the health of residents, staff and the community,” said Klinepeter.
The DOH will require more frequent testing for unvaccinated employees who work at skilled nursing facilities that do not meet the 80% expectation by Oct. 1.
For facilities that meet the expectation, the department will support surveillance testing in addition to outbreak testing through federal Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity (ELC) grant funding. Appropriate regulatory action will be taken if the facilities are not compliant with testing requirements.
The increased vaccination and testing aims to increase the rate of vaccination, ensure testing is happening frequently in areas where vaccination is low and transmission is high, and improve transparency for the public on vaccination rates in skilled nursing facilities.
The department also announced it launched a new skilled nursing facility vaccine dashboard that shows self-reported vaccination data that is submitted weekly to the federal government. The dashboard is now available on www.health.pa.gov.
“We want families to see the vaccination rates where their loved ones are living and working,” said Klinepeter. “If you don’t like what you see, contact the facility and encourage them to take the necessary steps to increase staff vaccination rates to keep COVID-19 out. We remain committed to protecting those who have been working on the front line of this pandemic over the past year-and-a-half and will continue to ensure our most vulnerable Pennsylvanians are safe.”