Joe Biden to mandate COVID vaccine for nursing home staff

All nursing homes in the United States will be directed to impose a vaccination mandate against COVID-19 for their staff on the instructions of President Joe Biden, according to media reports citing officials from the administration. In case any staff member does not get vaccinated against the disease they would reportedly lose out on Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Biden is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday in an address from the White House as the administration continues to push for a bigger inoculation drive in the country.

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the country, which will be managed by the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, could be put in place by September, according to US media reports.

According to data released by the United States federal authorities, a large number of employees in nursing homes have not been vaccinated against the transmissible disease. Nursing homes in the country had to bear the brunt of the early COVID-19 outbreak and their workers being among the first in the country to be eligible for shots.

It comes as the Biden administration seeks to raise the costs for those who have yet to get vaccinated, after months of incentives and giveaways proved to be insufficient to drive tens of millions of Americans to roll up their sleeves.

In just the past three weeks, Biden has forced millions of federal workers to attest to their vaccination status or face onerous new requirements, with even stricter requirements for federal workers in frontline health roles, and his administration has moved toward mandating vaccines for the military as soon as next month.

The news comes as the United States continues to struggle with the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which has been pushing the infection rate of the country multifold since late July, according to the data released by the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.