Mass Senior Care continues to remind nursing facilities that per the Long-term Care Facility COVID-19 Personnel Vaccination Requirement the booster vaccine mandate requires all nursing homes and rest homes to ensure that all eligible personnel have received a COVID-19 additional dose or booster vaccination by February 28, 2022.
EOHHS is standing firm on the February 28th date by which eligible nursing facility staff must be booster and has indicated that no extension will be issued. EOHHS believes that facilities have had sufficient time to educate staff since boosters where made available to health care workers in the early fall and the Commonwealth’s financial incentive program announced in early December followed by the January 6th mandate COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Order No. 2021-19. EOHHS also believes that they have been partners with nursing facility providers in making both financial incentives, education materials and the Rapid Response Teams available to assist in booster campaign efforts.
In addition, DPH has provided the following clarification as to how they will calculate booster vaccine rates since NHSN has removed question #4 related to staff booster eligibility.
DPH plans to identify nursing facilities with possible staff eligible who are not vaccinated: (total staff reported as fully vaccinated) – (total staff reported as receiving an additional dose/booster) > 0. DPH will contact nursing facilities by email on Monday of each week to inquire of the number of staff identified as not having received an additional dose/booster and how many (if any) are ineligible. As is the process now with the initial series vaccine mandate, nursing facilities have until end of day Wednesday to respond to DPH. DPH will adjust for staff who are reported by nursing facilities to be ineligible so that the final calculation for booster mandate enforcement will be: (total staff reported as fully vaccinated) – (total staff reported as receiving an additional dose/booster) – (total staff reported to DPH as being ineligible for booster). As a reminder, there is a week delay in data reporting and so DPH will not implement outreach to nursing facilities until the week of March 7th. It is extremely important that nursing facilities respond to the emails from DPH to avoid the need to submit administrative reconsiderations and unnecessary fines.