Surveillance of COVID-19 Vaccination in Nursing Homes, United States, December 2020–July 2021

  1. Andrew I. Geller
  2. Daniel S. Budnitz
  3. Heather Dubendris
  4. Radhika Gharpure
  5. Minn Soe
  6. Hsiu Wu
  7. Elizabeth J. Kalayil
  8. Andrea L. Benin
  9. Suchita A. Patel
  10. Megan C. Lindley
  11. Ruth Link-Gelles

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Abstract

Monitoring COVID-19 vaccination coverage among nursing home residents and staff is important to ensure high coverage rates and guide patient-safety policies. With the termination of the federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program, another source of facility-based vaccination data is needed. We compared numbers of COVID-19 vaccinations administered to nursing home residents and staff reported by pharmacies participating in the temporary federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program with the numbers of COVID-19 vaccinations reported by nursing homes participating in new COVID-19 vaccination modules of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). Pearson correlation coefficients comparing the number vaccinated between the 2 approaches were 0.89, 0.96, and 0.97 for residents and 0.74, 0.90, and 0.90 for staff, in the weeks ending January 3, 10, and 17, 2021, respectively. Based on subsequent NHSN reporting, vaccination coverage with ≥1 vaccine dose reached 73.7% for residents and 47.6% for staff the week ending January 31 and increased incrementally through July 2021. Continued monitoring of COVID-19 vaccination coverage is important as new nursing home residents are admitted, new staff are hired, and additional doses of vaccine are recommended.

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  1. Version published to 10.1177/00333549211066168
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.14.21257224: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This report is subject to a few limitations. First, correlation between Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program and NHSN data is not expected to be exact. Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program data include only individuals vaccinated on-site, whereas NHSN counts persons vaccinated at the facility or elsewhere. Second, there were instances in which the total number of doses administered to residents or staff according to Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program reporting exceeded the total number of current residents or staff reported to NHSN. One explanation is that the number of vaccine doses brought to a facility exceeded the number of residents and staff who decided to be vaccinated, and to avoid wastage other persons (e.g., healthcare workers from other facilities) were vaccinated and recorded as facility residents or staff. Another possible explanation is that the number of residents or staff were underreported to NHSN. Nonetheless, the number of facilities reporting excess doses administered was small and declined each week. Third, facilities reporting NHSN COVID-19 vaccination coverage may not be representative of all nursing homes. Reporting to NHSN was voluntary, and approximately one-tenth of eligible facilities reported vaccination coverage data in the last 4 weeks of the study period. Nonetheless, the January vaccination coverage rates reported by NHSN the Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program were similar for residents (77.3% ve...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.05.14.21257224v1 on medRxiv