State backtracks on COVID vaccine mandate for workers at state-run health facilities

Less than a day after Gov. Andy Beshear’s office announced it would require COVID-19 vaccinations for all employees and contractors at state-operated health care facilities, the state is backtracking, saying it erred in announcing the mandate.

Instead of requiring it, Beshear and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services will “strongly encourage” employees and contractors in these settings to get fully vaccinated by October 1, according to an emailed correction from the governor’s office late Tuesday morning.

“A correction is made below to yesterday’s news release to clarify that vaccinations are further encouraged at these facilities, not currently required,” a spokesperson for his office wrote in an email.

Any staff in those facilities who opts against vaccination will be tested for the virus at least twice weekly. Employees can claim exceptions to this policy based on medical or religious reasons. Universal masking in those settings continues to be required.

Just before 5 p.m. on Monday the state erroneously announced it was requiring vaccines for these groups. Betsy Johnson, an industry lobbyist and president of the Kentucky Association of Health Care Facilities, said when she read the news in the governor’s press release Monday, she wasn’t surprised. National health care groups, including the American Medical Association and the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, have called for vaccine mandates among health care personnel.

“It didn’t give me much pause,” Johnson said. “It seems to be that the trend is toward mandating it. I’m more surprised it’s going to be a recommendation.”

The governor’s office made the announcement that it has since walked back in a written press release less than an hour after Beshear held a live update on the growing threat of coronavirus across the commonwealth.

“Despite all of our efforts, this virus has claimed lives in our facilities, just as it has in facilities across America, and it threatens to do so again,” Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander said on Monday. “Increasing the vaccination rate and/or testing rates for staff is a critical next step to ensure that we defeat this COVID variant and provide the best protection possible for the people who receive care in our facilities.”

COVID-19 has ravaged Kentucky’s nursing homes and other congregate living settings, where residents, either because of age or health condition, are among the most vulnerable to developing a severe coronavirus infection or dying from the virus. Kentucky has so far reported more than 2,300 COVID-19 deaths in these facilities.

But staff have shown a persistent reluctance to get vaccinated. While more than 81% of residents in Kentucky’s long-term care facilities are fully inoculated, only about 49% of staff have chosen to get the shot — the eighth lowest rate nationwide, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Residents and staff in these settings were among the first groups in Kentucky given access to a vaccine. Yet on more than one occasion since doses became widely available, an unvaccinated staff person has carried the virus into their facility and infected others.

In the spring, an unvaccinated staff member at a Morehead nursing home brought the virus into work, infecting roughly 30 residents (a majority of whom were vaccinated) and 20 staff. Six residents were hospitalized and three died, including one who was vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who used the outbreak as a case study to show that while the vaccine is still overwhelmingly effective at staving off severe infection, vaccinated people can still catch the virus.

In this nursing home at that time, more than 90% of the 83 residents had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, compared with only 53% of the 116 health care personnel, the late April study found.

As new cases surge around the commonwealth — the rate of Kentuckians testing positive hit 9.77% on Monday, the highest since late January — Beshear has so far stopped short of enacting another statewide mask mandate, though he has recommended that people resume wearing masks indoors, including in K-12 settings, regardless of their vaccination status. Beshear again on Monday emphasized the importance of getting vaccinated.

“We want to get back to normal,” he said. “Those who are not vaccinated are preventing us from getting back to normal.”