With colder temperatures ushering in flu season and Covid cases likely to rise, the country’s most vulnerable population and the workers who care for them may only benefit from the fall Covid booster campaign. Researchers say it can.
However, the federal dollars we pay for campaigns are declining.
Recent study A study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund found that a fall campaign promoting boosters (bivalent or not) could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Specifically, a campaign reaching the same number of people as the 2020-2021 flu vaccination campaign would prevent more than 75,000 deaths and 745,000 hospitalizations, and save $44 billion by the end of March 2023. It will generate direct medical cost savings.
According to the data, only 55.7% and 42% of SNF residents and staff respectively received boosters. release By the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as of September 18.
If immunization continues at current pace, country faces potential winter spike in Covid infections, leading to 16,000 hospitalizations and 1,200 deaths per day by March 2023, federal study says people predict.
According to CMS, 158,070 nursing home residents have had Covid-related deaths confirmed since the start of the pandemic. The total death toll of SNF staff reached 2,707. As of January 2022, deaths in nursing homes make up his 23% of total Covid deaths in the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). analysis of CMS data.
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Findings like this are consistent with what nursing home leaders have been saying anecdotally for months. Most recently, at the Congressional Special Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis Hearings on Sept. 21.
David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and a witness at the hearing, said: urged Members of Congress are calling for higher vaccination levels in nursing homes by mandating boosters, among other efforts to strengthen the workforce.
Such suggestions were hardly followed up during the hearings, and Grabowski felt he missed an opportunity to “really delve into a body of ideas.”
The bivalent booster was approved by the FDA in September as protection against the original strain of Covid, along with the Omicron variant and subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. Boosters are available to anyone who has completed a primary vaccination series and has not had a booster dose for at least two months.
Studies have shown that natural and vaccine protections are temporary, but uptake of boosters in the US has declined since the Omicron wave. Federal funding for booster campaigns has also not been replenished. That’s largely due to the perception that the pandemic is over, Commonwealth researchers found.
Only 36% of the general population aged 50 and over received a second booster dose, and as of September 12, vaccination coverage including boosters had fallen to less than 100,000 doses per day. increase.
That number is slowly rebounding as people get their hands on the latest booster shots for the fall, but federal researchers say the lack of federal funding “could undermine the goal of high coverage.” says.
