Casey, Wyden, Bennet, Kelly Seek Assurances on Federal COVID-19 Response in Nursing Homes as Omicron Spreads

Washington, D.C. – In the face of surging COVID-19 infections, U.S. Senate Aging Committee Chairman Bob Casey (D-PA), U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) and U.S. Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra seeking information on the agency’s steps to prevent the spread of disease among residents and workers in our Nation’s nursing homes. Recent reporting citing federal data published in response to requests from Senators Casey and Wyden highlights concerns about the administration of booster shots and second primary doses to nursing home residents and workers.

“We are concerned that just 55 percent of fully vaccinated nursing home residents nationally have received additional primary or booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines as of December 12, 2021,” the Senators wrote. “Worker uptake of additional primary and booster vaccine doses is even lower at 23 percent nationally… Racial disparities in vaccination rates also must continue to be addressed. Research has shown that people of color are more likely to live in nursing homes with low vaccination rates, while Black and Hispanic people in the general population make up a disproportionately small share of booster dose recipients.”

The letter asked the Biden Administration to provide information on steps it is taking to ensure vaccinations and booster shots are readily accessible in all nursing homes, including those in rural areas where vaccine uptake is often lower than the national average. The Senators are also seeking information about any supply chain issues, staffing shortages or other obstacles the Biden Administration has observed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued guidance that all adults receive booster doses to better protect themselves against COVID-19, including the highly infectious omicron and delta variants.

More than 200,000 people living and working in long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Senators Casey and Wyden have been pushing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to increase transparency about the impact of COVID-19 in nursing homes since early 2020, when they called on the Trump Administration to publish data about infections, deaths and shortages of workers and supplies. This year, Senators Casey and Wyden called on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to collect and release data on COVID-19 vaccination rates in the Nation’s nursing homes. The Senators first called for such data to be collected and published in December 2020, at the time vaccines first became available. 

Full text of the letter is below and a PDF can be found here.

Secretary Becerra’s response to Chairman Casey can be found here.