By: Jared Evan
Nursing home staffers are refusing to take the COVID jab in NYC at a curiously high number, and this pattern seems to expand beyond NY.
Nearly a third of workers at the city’s elder care facilities have still not gotten a jab — and at 16 of the city’s homes less than half are vaccinated, state Health Department records reveal.
“Those low vaccination rates for nursing home staff are absolutely insane,” said Assemblyman Ron Kim, who chairs the State Assembly’s Aging Committee. “They had access to the vaccine before any of us. There should be a requirement for anybody working in these facilities to be vaccinated”, Kim told the NY Post.
In general, the nationwide vaccine effort has slowed down, after an initial clamor to get the experimental vaccine, the remaining unvaccinated are in no rush to get the jab.
While the media is obsessed with polls pointing to white Republican males being hesitant to taking the vaccine, CDC numbers reveal, that younger demographics overall are not interested in getting the vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Recently reported that:
Vaccination coverage and intent among adults are lowest among those aged 18–39 years.
The official data shows that, from March to May, one quarter of these young adults said they were unsure about getting vaccinated and another quarter said they will not get it.
The CDC does not even mention political affiliation as a factor. Among the 18 to 39-year-olds, the rates were lowest for those who were younger, black, poorer, less educated, uninsured, and living outside metropolitan areas.
In the nation’s nursing homes, an average of only 55 percent of workers are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to new federal data, even though these long-term care facilities have witnessed massive carnage from the pandemic, including almost 135,000 COVID-19 deaths among residents and staff.
Vaccination rates for nursing home residents are much higher, with a national average of 78 percent fully vaccinated in each facility, the data released from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) shows.
These low vax numbers at nursing homes — where staff are not required by law to be immunized from COVID-19 — come despite the acute vulnerability such facilities have to the disease, NY Post reported.
NY Post reported:
Statewide, 87 percent of nursing home residents are vaccinated compared to just 67 percent of staffers, many of whom provide direct care to the frail elderly.
In New York City, 81 percent of nursing home residents are vaccinated compared to 67 percent of staffers.
But in Brooklyn, only 58 percent of nursing home staffers have been vaccinated through July 10 compared to 75 percent of the nursing home residents.
At one home in Queens, the Peninsula Nursing & Rehab in Far Rockaway, only 38.7 percent of the staff were vaccinated, compared to the 72 percent of residents. The staff vaccination rate has increased from an even worse 26 percent in May.
“One must wonder if in NY Cuomo’s initial disastrous policies, which killed over 15,000 seniors in nursing homes, has created a distrust of government in general, and we are seeing this in nursing homes across the country. The more desperate the media and government gets, trying to convince people to get he vaccine, with food and lottery tickets, and people like Steve Colbert singing and dancing on TV with vaccination songs, the more unlikely the remaining unvaccinated are going to give in, people will resist things, when it is pushed non stop on them, this is normal”, a local doctor from a walk in clinic told TJV News.
