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VACCINATIONS AND HERD IMMUNITY The declines in COVID-19 cases and deaths are consistent across nearly all states, the analysis found. A combination of the newly authorized COVID-19 vaccines,

tighter state and county restrictions over the winter, and high levels of natural herd immunity within nursing homes all appear to be contributing factors. A federal program tasked with

vaccinating the majority of America’s long-term care residents and staff is slated to wrap up at the end of the month. Uptake among residents appears to be high, according to a survey by the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while staff uptake was much lower.  The new analysis paints a clear picture that “the vaccine is making a difference,” says Mike Wasserman, a

geriatrician and past president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine. “The risk of transmission appears to be dramatically reduced,” he says, “as is the risk of severe

illness is you are vaccinated.” Many facilities have likely developed some herd immunity, with almost 1.2 million infections reported in nursing homes over the course of the pandemic,

according to data from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  “The current decline began before there were a meaningful number of people protected by the vaccines,”

says AARP’s Ari Houser, a coauthor of the new analysis. “That’s largely due to the virus burning through affected nursing homes over the last few months, as we have seen in previous spikes.

So many people have already gotten COVID that we have reached a point where the pool of people in nursing homes who can get newly infected is much smaller,” he says, adding that “vaccines

have likely steepened the decline only in the last few weeks.” While the declines are welcome, Jennifer Schrack, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

who specializes in the epidemiology of aging, says that there are still many unknowns around COVID-19 in long-term care settings. “People have to remember that this is still a new disease,”

she says.  “We don’t know how it’s going to behave. We don’t know how variants are going to behave. It still remains to be seen whether older people, such as nursing home residents, take to

the vaccines as well as other people. The recent drops in cases and deaths are “very encouraging,” Schrack adds, “but [the virus] is not gone. It’s OK to be optimistic, but we still have to

be diligent.”