Nursing Home Staffs’ Vax Rates by State

One in four of the more than 900,000 Americans who have died from COVID resided in nursing homes. Yet two years into the pandemic, hesitancy about protective vaccines persists in the facilities in many states.

In January, the Supreme Court upheld a regulation by the Biden administration that required all staff to be vaccinated in long-term care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding, which is pretty much all of them.

But a newly released rundown of state vaccination rates may not provide much comfort to vulnerable elderly residents and their families living in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Missouri, which rank at the bottom – only about 70 percent of nursing home staff were fully vaccinated as of Jan. 30, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The national average was 84 percent.

The highest vaccination rates – 99 percent of staff – were in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and Rhode Island.

Kaiser’s vaccination rates were calculated based on the staff working in 10,600 U.S. nursing homes who’ve received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines or one shot of Johnson & Johnson’s traditional vaccine. The rates exclude booster shots, which are not part of the federal mandate. The nationwide booster rate for staff, which Kaiser provides separately in its report, is a low 28 percent – the Hawaii, New Mexico and California rates are double that.

A partial reason for the wide range of vaccination coverage is that states have different deadlines for complying with the federal mandate – some were in January and some are in February. But numerous states, including Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia, have low vaccination rates because they are, despite the Supreme Court ruling, seeking other legal avenues to challenge the mandate.

The size of a state’s population of people over 65 doesn’t seem to have much bearing on vaccination rates in nursing homes.

Florida, with the second-highest concentration of residents over 65, is one of 16 states in the South, Midwest and Rocky Mountains where less than 80 percent of staff are vaccinated. Maine has the highest percentage of retirees and a 99 percent vaccination rate.

If you or a family member is in a long-term care facility, see how your state ranks. Better yet, ask the facility for its rate and whether it is complying with the court-approved mandate.

Read more blog posts in our ongoing coverage of COVID-19.

Squared Away writer Kim Blanton invites you to follow us on Twitter @SquaredAwayBC. To stay current on our blog, please join our free email list. You’ll receive just one email each week – with links to the two new posts for that week – when you sign up here.  This blog is supported by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.