Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said nursing home staff would have to get vaccinated by March 15. That deadline applied to 24 states including Arizona.
There are roughly 148 skilled nursing facilities in the state and the rule applied only to them. That leaves out the more than 2,000 assisted-living homes and centers in Arizona. David Voepel is the CEO of the Arizona Health Care Association, which represents those skilled facilities.
"Just taking the pulse of the membership from large companies down to the smaller ones, I'm hearing that there were anywhere from 78% to 82% vaccinated," he said. "And the rest were exemptions with the majority of those exemptions being religious."
Voepel says fully vaccinated, according to CMS, refers to staff who completed their primary series of either Pfizer and Moderna or one dose of Johnson and Jonson.
