When you think of nursing homes in New York, the first two words that probably come to mind are “Andrew Cuomo.” And the next two words you think of are “body count.” But this story has nothing to do with the governor and his deadly policies enacted at the beginning of the pandemic. The state’s nursing homes are running into a very different problem these days. Despite having been in the 1A group and being immediately eligible as soon as the vaccines became available, nearly half of the workers at Empire State nursing home still haven’t been vaccinated. And the reason isn’t a scarcity of vials. These workers are simply declining in droves. Now the state Health Department is doing something about it that they hope will push more of these workers to roll up their sleeves. (NY Post)

Nearly half of New York’s nursing home workers haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine — so the state Department of Health is now putting more pressure on the facilities to bridge the gap, The Post has learned.

Health department brass issued new guidance late Thursday that requires nursing homes to offer “an opportunity to receive” the jab to all consenting residents and staff by April 29 and within two weeks of a new hire or a new admission, records obtained by The Post show.

Both staff and residents who opt out will need to sign paperwork acknowledging that they are declining.

More than 40% of the nursing home workers have held off on taking the shot and that adds up to a lot of people. Given how fast the virus was tearing through the nursing homes last year, I would have assumed that these employees would be the first to sign up, but that’s apparently not the case.

So what is the state doing about it? The government is still dancing away from saying that the vaccine is “mandatory” for anyone because of the horrible optics and potential legal challenges. But the Health Department has cooked up a plan that comes about as close to making the shots mandatory as you could imagine. All of the workers in the nursing homes have to be “offered” a chance at a vaccination by April 29th. Any facility found to not be in compliance will face fines of up to $2,000 per violation.

Even more ominously, any worker who declines to be vaccinated will have to file paperwork saying that they are declining the “opportunity.” It’s obviously not being written into the policy specifically, but what do you think is going to happen to the workers who decline? I would imagine that their future job prospects are going to suddenly start looking very limited.

The state is describing the program as a way to incentivize nursing home workers to get vaccinated. Not everyone in the industry agrees. The Executive Director of Greater New York Health Care Facilities Association, Michael Balboni said, “There are healthcare workers who are afraid to take the vaccine, period. How do you convince them that this is in the best interest for themselves and their families? It’s something that everybody is still trying to figure out.”

One nursing home administrator told the Post that hesitancy isn’t really the problem. He said that his nurses were having a hard time getting appointments to be vaccinated. Further, the nursing home wasn’t ordering vials to be delivered directly to them because they can’t ask for small enough batches so a lot of it would go to waste. But mostly he complained about the state government rushing into the rollout of this new policy without asking for any input from the nursing home operators themselves.

“It’s just another example of [the state] going off on its own without talking to anyone who runs a nursing home,” the source griped.

The source said the recent exodus of DOH staffers has compounded the problem and a lot of the state’s best health experts have left.

“There’s just a whole lack of communication, this whole thing, why would you roll this out and never talk to the nursing homes?” they said.

If that sounds familiar to you, it should. New York has been issuing shifting and sometimes conflicting orders all through the pandemic. They’ve sought out very little input from the various communities affected by these policies and the results have been fairly obvious. Every time it seems like we’re close to being out of the woods in terms of the pandemic, New York’s government seems to find a way to score an own goal and move backward again.