The National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) is calling for more health care workers to become vaccinated against COVID-19. The advocacy group expressed support for a national vaccine mandate for health care workers.
The White House last week announced that the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) would be developing regulations to require vaccinations for workers in the nation’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes, which have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. No plans have been announced thus far for a nationwide mandate that applies to all health care workers or all federal employees.
Cabinet-level agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and HHS have instituted vaccine requirements for health care workers in their employ.
“While the move to mandatory vaccinations for these frontline [nursing home] health workers will help protect patients, the current policy does not go far enough,” said NHPCO President & CEO Edo Banach. “To protect all Americans and give everyone the confidence to seek the health care they need, all health workers and volunteers in all settings — including home health, home hospice, and home palliative care workers — should be required to be vaccinated against and regularly tested for COVID-19.”
Banach indicated that NHPCO supported exemptions for medical or religious reasons.
To date the outbreak has caused close to 630,000 deaths in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the widespread vaccination brought infection rates down during the spring and early summer months, the virus is surging once again largely due to the pathogen’s delta variant and the number of people who remain unvaccinated.
Nearly 99% of COVID-19-associated deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated according to an Associated Press analysis of CDC data.
While many in the health care community and government officials have urged people to get the shots, those calls are growing louder now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTEch vaccine. The agency had previously approved the vaccine on an emergency basis. Many people who have resisted vaccination have cited this as a rationale for their decisions.
Some action has occurred at the state level. To date, 11 states have implemented vaccine mandates among health care workers, according to a recent report by the National Academy for State Health Policy.
“A national requirement for health care workers to be vaccinated would provide greater certainty for the health care sector,” Banach said. “The requirement should include a clear timeline and implementation should be supported with financial resources, including but not limited to additional support under the Provider Relief Fund and sufficient home-based rapid testing supplies.”