Similar to hospitals nursing homes are feeling the impacts of Omicron. State Health Officer Dr. Joe Kanter said COVID cases are not only impacting residents but those who take care of them.
“A lot of COVID is going around, their staff is of course not immune to that, calling out sick and they are having to mitigate these outbreaks just like a number of other settings are,” said Kanter.
Last week the health department reported more than 1,000 cases among nursing home residents, an increase of about 300 from the week before. About 1,300 nursing home staff were absent due to COVID last week. Kanter said however there is good news to report among long-term care facilities.
“Thankfully though because we have a decent base of vaccination in nursing home residents, we’ve not yet seen any substantive increase in deaths among nursing home residents,” said Kanter.
Kanter credits a high vaccination/booster rate among nursing home residents as to why COVID deaths have not seen a spike.
“I’ll tell you 57% right now of nursing home residents in Louisiana are boosted. That’s significantly more than the general population but not as high as we really want it to be,” said Kanter.
As for nursing home staff, only 16% are reportedly boosted.
To view individual nursing home COVID data click here.
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