5 States Where Nursing Homes Are Beating COVID-19

Brazil, the Philippines and many countries in Europe are facing terrible, hospital-filling spikes in COVID-19 cases right now. Public health officials in the United States are warning that the mild swell in cases starting to form here could turn into a big fourth wave, if aggressive strains of the virus spread faster than vaccines, or if some strains resist the vaccines. But, for now, COVID-19 vaccine makers, armies of CVS Health and Walgreens vaccinators, and U.S. nursing homes are winning: The number of new cases per 1,000 residents, in nursing homes that report case data to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Healthcare Safety Network, fell to 0.78 for the week ending March 28. The number of new cases per 1,000 residents is down 97% from the pandemic peak, of 31% cases per 1,000 residents, which occurred during the week ending Dec. 20, 2020. The new case rate for nursing home staff members has fallen 92%, to 1.81 new cases per 1,000 nursing home staff workers for the latest week. Getting accurate figures for the percentage of nursing home residents and staff members vaccinated is difficult, because people move in and out of nursing home beds and into and out of nursing home employment every day. But the CDC reported Thursday that U.S. vaccinators had administered at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to 4.8 million long-term care facility residents and 1.6 million long-term care facility staff members as of 6 a.m. Thursday. Thanks, in part, to the aggressive effort to vaccinate nursing home residents, the United States had given at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose to 74% of U.S. residents ages 65 and older. For the population as a whole, the United States has a vaccination rate of 44.9 doses administered per 100 residents. That compares with a rate of 52.4 doses per 100 residents in the United Kingdom and a rate of 16.4 doses per 100 residents in the European Union, according to Our World in Data. (Photo: Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/iStock)