CDC Recommends Long Term Care Residents and Staff Receive COVID-19 Vaccine First

In Tuesday’s COVID-19 Update, we shared an update from the American Health Care Association (AHCA) announcing that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to include long term care residents at the highest level of priority for the first distributions of a COVID-19 vaccine. Based on Oregon rules and the information we have seen from the CDC, we believe that this recommendation would include Oregon nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, and residential care facilities.

This announcement means that residents are now included with health care workers in Tier 1A. This is important because long term care residents were originally included in Tier 1B, just after health care workers. You can view the materials that were discussed during Tuesday’s ACIP meeting online here.

Unfortunately, the reality is there will not be enough doses in the initial batches of vaccine for everyone in the top tier to be vaccinated immediately. Pfizer projects they can produce only 6.5 million initial doses of their vaccine. There are at least 21 million health care workers and three million long term care residents.

In addition, states are not required to follow these CDC guidelines. It will now be up to each state to decide how to allocate its limited supply of vaccine.

OHCA is in communications with Governor Brown and the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and is emphasizing the importance of prioritizing all long term care providers and residents for vaccine distribution. We will update members as soon as any additional information is confirmed.

You can read this alert and past COVID-19 Updates on the OHCA COVID-19 Information page under “Members.”