Hawai`i Leads Nation in Nursing Home Staff Vaccinations

The latest release of AARP’s Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard incorporates new data on vaccination rates and finds that nearly 84 percent of staff and about 86 percent residents have been vaccinated for COVID-19 in Hawai`i, the highest percentage in the nation for staff vaccinations.

Hawai`i also has the highest percentage (86%) of nursing homes meeting or exceeding the industry benchmark of having at least 75 percent of staff fully vaccinated.

Nationally, slightly more than half of health care workers in nursing homes were fully vaccinated (56.7%) and about 78 percent of residents were fully vaccinated in the United States as of June 20.

At the national level, COVID cases and deaths have dropped significantly from the previous dashboard releases. Deaths of nursing home residents in Hawaii remained at zero. However, despite the high vaccination rate in Hawai`i, there were three new staff infections and two new resident COVID-19 cases in the four weeks ending June 20.

While rates of cases and deaths have improved from the height of the pandemic, chronic problems revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic continue. The most recent data shows that 24 percent of nursing homes in Hawai`i reported a shortage of nurses or aides, a slight decrease from the previous reporting period when 26 percent of nursing homes reported nursing worker shortages.

The percentage of nursing homes reporting urgent need for personal protective equipment last month was below the national average. About 2.4 percent reported shortages, compared to the national average of five percent.

“Hawai`i’s nursing homes have done a good job in keeping cases and deaths low and should be justifiably proud of the high vaccination rate among staff and residents,” said Keali`i Lopez, the AARP Hawai`i State Director. “But the potential for the highly contagious Delta variant causing more harm to residents and staff is very real. We must do everything we can to keep them safe from the virus, which requires continued efforts to vaccinate staff and residents and continued vigilance.”

AARP recently submitted a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) recommending the federal government commit to working with states, long-term care facilities, and other entities to ensure that facilities can access and administer vaccines on a continuing basis for the foreseeable future. The letter also applauds CMS for publishing data on nursing home vaccinations and calls on the agency to offer that data in a more user-friendly format. AARP has repeatedly urged transparency and public reporting about the impact of COVID on nursing facilities.

The AARP Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard analyzes federally reported data in four-week periods going back to June 1, 2020. Using this data, the AARP Public Policy Institute, in collaboration with the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Ohio, created the dashboard to provide snapshots of the virus' infiltration into nursing homes and impact on nursing home residents and staff, to identify specific areas of concern at the national and state levels in a timely manner.

The complete Nursing Home COVID-19 Dashboard is available at www.aarp.org/nursinghomedashboard. For more information on how COVID is impacting nursing homes and AARP's advocacy on this issue, visit www.aarp.org/nursinghomes.