WASHINGTON – The Biden government on Wednesday published revised guidelines for nursing home visits during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing guests to go inside to see residents, whether they or the residents have been vaccinated.
The recommendations, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with comments from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, are the first revision of the federal government’s guidance on nursing homes since September. And they got there because more than three million doses of vaccines were administered in nursing homes, the agency said.
Federal officials said in the new lead that outreach visits are still preferable because of a lower risk of transmission, even when residents and guests are fully vaccinated.
The guidelines were also the latest indication that the pandemic has weakened in the United States, and coronavirus cases have continued to decline across the country, although the seven-day average remains at more than 58,000. The CDC on Monday issued long-awaited guidelines for fully vaccinated Americans, telling them it is safe to gather in small groups at home without masks or social distance.
Approximately 62.5 million people received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, including approximately 32.9 million people who were completely vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
In a statement setting out the reasons for updating the recommendations, dr. Lee A. Fleisher, the chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicine and Medication Services, the millions of vaccines administered to residents and staff of nursing homes, and a decrease in cases of coronavirus. in nursing homes.
“CMS recognizes the psychological, emotional and physical toll that long-term isolation and separation of family has taken on nursing home residents and their families,” he said.
Earlier in the pandemic, the coronavirus swept through tens of thousands of long-term care facilities in the United States, killing more than 150,000 residents and employees and accounting for more than a third of all virus deaths since late spring. But since the advent of vaccines, new cases and deaths in nursing homes have fallen sharply, surpassing the national decline, according to an analysis of federal data from the New York Times.
The eight-page recommendations, which are not legally binding, do have suggested limits, stating that ‘responsible indoor visits’ should be allowed at all times, unless a guest visits an unsuspecting resident in a country where the Covid-19 Positivity rate is higher than 10 percent and less than 70 percent of the residents in the nursing home are fully vaccinated. The guidance also says to restrict visits if residents have Covid-19 or are in quarantine.
So-called compassionate care visits – when a resident’s health deteriorates severely – should be allowed, regardless of vaccination status or the province’s positivity rate, the guidance said.
When a positive case is identified in a nursing home, visits should be stopped and residents and staff tested, the guidance said. Visits can be resumed in other parts of the facility if there are no positive tests, but if cases are discovered in other areas, nursing homes must stop all visits.