Some worried about vaccine crackdown in nursing homes

The Biden administration is cracking down on nursing homes by requiring all workers to get vaccinated in an effort to protect our most vulnerable.

But nursing home leaders are concerned workers will quit because of the federal government’s new requirement. We know at this point many people who have not been vaccinated do not want to be vaccinated. Some of those people work in nursing homes.

In 2020, we reported about Mary Daniel, who took a job washing dishes at her husband’s assisted living facility, so she could see him, hug him and hold him when the state locked them down at the start of the pandemic.

“COVID kills we certainly understand that now,” Daniel said. “But we also understand that isolation kills too.”

Daniel does not want her husband isolated ever again, but that would be the case if he ever contracted COVID-19. So she’s relieved President Joe Biden will require all nursing homes to ensure their workers are vaccinated against it.

“If you are a worker who was working in an inpatient facility and you profess to care and love about the disabled and the elderly, you have to protect them as best you can,” Daniel said. “And that means getting the vaccine.”

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