(HealthDay News) — Residents of nursing homes have been a particularly high-risk group throughout the pandemic, and the advent of the fast-spreading omicron variant has them facing another wave of infections and deaths, new data show.
During the week ending Jan. 9, U.S. nursing homes reported more than 32,000 COVID-19 cases and 645 deaths among their residents, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is a sevenfold increase in cases from a month earlier and a 47% increase in deaths. About 57,200 nursing home workers also had COVID-19 that same week, a tenfold increase from a month earlier, the CDC said.
“We need to build a Fort Knox around protecting nursing homes, but we’re not doing that right now, and that’s why cases are surging,” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press. “We’re going to have exponential numbers of hospitalizations and deaths.”
Still, vaccination efforts may have made a real impact in saving lives: Even with the dramatic increases in cases, the death toll from COVID-19 at nursing homes is still a fraction of those in December 2020, when the CDC says about 6,200 deaths per week were recorded. About 87% of nursing home residents have been fully vaccinated, the CDC says, and 63% have received their third doses. Among staff at care facilities, about 83% are fully vaccinated and 29% have their boosters.
To further protect residents, Feigl-Ding recommends vaccines, mandatory boosters, testing visitors, using medical-grade masks (such as N95s), and using high-efficiency air filters.
Nursing homes are working to protect their residents by once again putting limits on visitors, sometimes by keeping them in common areas with physical distance; providing surgical masks or requiring proof of a negative test; and holding vaccine clinics and town hall meetings on the importance of vaccines and boosters.
