Report: Nursing home staff vaccination rates up; COVID-19 deaths down

Nearly 59% of the state’s nursing home staffers are fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, a 5 percentage point jump in vaccination rates from the previous month, according to AARP Florida data released Thursday.

With 58.5% of staff vaccinated, Florida ranks No. 46 in the nation in the percentage of vaccinated nursing homes staff, with Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and Oklahoma trailing in the four-week period ending Oct. 17.

The AARP Florida report, dubbed the AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard, also shows 150 Florida nursing facilities have met the industry stated standard to have 75% of staff vaccinated.

That means about 80% of Florida’s nursing homes have not met the industry standard.

Nevertheless, AARP Florida State Director Jeff Johnson celebrated the findings.

Johnson noted the 5 percentage point increase in vaccinated nursing home staff is the largest single month jump since AARP started tracking the data. Moreover, he said in a prepared release that 92 nursing home residents had died during the four-week period under review, down from 289 deaths in the previous month’s report.

Additionally, Johnson said, COVID-19 positivity rates among nursing home residents had also dropped from the previous reporting, plummeting from four cases per 100 residents to one case per 100 residents.

“With available booster shots and increased vaccination, we are hopeful that future reports will continue this trend,” Johnson said in the prepared release.

The percentage of nursing homes reporting a staff shortage also decreased from about 25% to 22%.

The report is produced from data the nursing home industry self-reports to the federal government. AARP Public Policy Institute works with Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Ohio to create the monthly report.