At the August 13th Public Health Council meeting, DPH reported a decline in health care personnel flu and COVID-19 vaccination rates for the 2024-2025 season for most licensed facilities and EMS. For flu vaccinations, acute care hospitals averaged 83.5%, non-acute care hospitals 75.3%, ambulatory surgical centers 74.9%, dialysis centers 57.8%, clinics 60.8%, nursing homes 52.3%, rest homes 68.7%, adult day health programs 52.2%, EMS 21.2%, and hospice 65.4%. For the 2023-2024 reporting period, nursing homes averaged 58.3%.
For COVID-19 vaccination for health care personnel for 2024-25 season, acute care hospitals averaged 21.6%, non-acute care hospitals 19%, ambulatory surgical centers 38.4%, dialysis centers 5.3%, clinics 41.6%, nursing homes 16.5%, rest homes 48.2%, adult day health programs 28.9%, EMS 16.3%, and hospice 39.6%. For the 2023-2024 reporting period, nursing homes averaged 18.5%.
DPH has established an overall minimum vaccination rate of 90% or greater for eligible health care personnel at all licensed healthcare facilities. As a reminder, as a condition of licensure, DPH regulations require health care facilities and services to ensure all health care personnel are vaccinated annually with seasonal influenza and COVID-19 vaccines as recommended by the CDC, unless an individual claims an exemption, notify health care personnel about the requirements and educate them about the benefits and risks of these vaccines, provide or arrange for vaccination of all health care personnel who cannot provide proof of current vaccination at no cost, and report information to DPH documenting each facility’s compliance with the health care personnel vaccination requirements.
Vaccination for the flu and COVID-19 is strongly recommended for all health care personnel. To increase vaccination rates amongst health care personnel for the 2025-2026 season, DPH will be collaborating with stakeholders to host educational webinars regarding updated flu and COVID-19 information and facilitate a quality improvement collaborative to increase health care personnel immunization rates.