Research supports COVID-19 booster shot mandates for SNF workers

With the prospect of new strains of the COVID-19 virus looming, researchers are making a case for states to impose vaccination booster shot mandates on nursing home employees.

Mandating healthcare workers to become vaccinated was successful in 2021, and that produced no corresponding worsening of staff shortages, pointed out academic researchers writing in JAMA Health Forum on Friday.

Barely more than half of nursing home workers currently have received any kind of booster shot, they said, drawing parallels to last summer, when fewer than 60% had received any vaccination shots at all. The number of vaccinated nursing home workers is now just below 90%.

States mandating the worker vaccinations that did not allow the option of more frequent testing instead were much more successful, investigators found.