US officials Federal officials relax guidance on nursing home visits

Primary tabs

Wed, 2021-03-10 19:05 — mike kraft

Federal officials relax guidance on nursing home visits, citing vaccines and slowing infections The recommendations call for outside visitation when possible but acknowledge visits indoors are the only option for some residents. Amy Goldstein Washington Post

Federal health officials Wednesday substantially relaxed the government’s guidelines for seeing nursing home residents in person, saying that vaccinations and a slowing of coronavirus infections in the facilities warrants restoring indoor visits in most situations.

The nursing home guidance, the first federal advice on the subject since September, says “outdoor visitation is preferred,” even when a nursing home resident and family or friends are fully vaccinated against covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

But acknowledging that weather or a resident’s poor health might make an outdoor visit impractical, the advice encourages nursing homes to permit indoor visits “at all times and for all residents,” regardless of whether people have been vaccinated, except for a few circumstances.

Federal officials say those situations include when a resident has not been fully immunized against the virus and lives at a nurse home in which fewer than 70 percent of those in the facility are fully vaccinated and when the nursing home is in a community with high rates of local infections — greater than 10 percent of tests positive.

The eight pages of guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services marks the most recent sign the Biden administration regards drastic restrictions on life in the United States as beginning to slide into the past tense, even as the president and his aides urge Americans to maintain public health precautions for the foreseeable future.

The guidance comes two days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued separate advice Monday, sketching the outlines of what activities are considered safe for fully vaccinated Americans. That guidance gave such people greater freedom to socialize and engage in some normal daily activities. It said people two weeks past their final shot may visit indoors with unvaccinated members of a single household at low risk of severe disease, without wearing masks or keeping a safe distance.

The two announcements are not outright edicts for the country. They are recommendations, rooted in the best available information about the state of the pandemic and a far-from-complete body of research into what makes sense — all juxtaposed against Americans’ profound weariness with a constricted way of living that is reaching its one-year anniversary.

“We acknowledge the toll that separation and isolation has taken,” the document says. “We also acknowledge that there is no substitute for physical contact, such as the warm embrace between a resident and their loved one.”

For those reasons, the guidance says, a fully vaccinated nursing home resident “can choose to have close contact (including touch) with their visitor while wearing a well-fitting face mask and performing hand-hygiene before and after.”

Those visitors, the guidance says, should maintain a safe distance from a nursing home’s other residents and staff. ...

ALSO SEE PREVIOUSLY POSTED Canadian nursing home controversy raises issue of more freedom for vaccinated residents

Country / Region Tags:

General Topic Tags: