The federal government is saying good-bye to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees of Medicare-certified healthcare facilities, including home health agencies, the White House disclosed late Monday.
In coming days, the Department of Health and Human Services will start the process to end the vaccination requirements for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-certified facilities, the White House said. As of May 11, the day the public health emergency ends, federal employees, contractors and foreign air travelers to the United States also will no longer require COVID-19 shots.
The news comes nearly two years after President Joe Biden issued federal vaccine mandates for over 100 million Americans — including healthcare workers. In the week ending on April 26, 1,052 Americans died from COVID-19 — the lowest total since March 2020.
“While I believe that these vaccine mandates had a tremendous beneficial impact, we are now at a point where we think that it makes a lot of sense to pull these requirements down,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, told The Associated Press on Monday.
LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan agrees with the government’s move.
“A continuation of the vaccine mandate is no longer needed,” she said in a statement released Tuesday. “Our country is in a very different place now than in summer of 2021, when the mandate was initially proposed.”
However, she added that “whether or not a mandate is in place, there is no question that COVID-19 vaccines are a safe and effective defense against the virus, which disproportionately impacts older adults and the people who care for them.”
Although a federal mandate from CMS is winding down, providers are eagerly awaiting the impending release of a permanent COVID-19 standard for healthcare from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In December 2022, OSHA submitted a final rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review. The agency’s last released emergency temporary guidelines in June 2021 but withdrew them in January of last year after the Supreme Court blocked it.
