By Paige Cornwell , Asia Fields and Mary Hudetz 

Patricia Short navigates the halls and quarantine zones in the nursing home where she works, checking residents for COVID-19 symptoms, testing them when they show signs of coronavirus infection and telling their frustrated family members they still can’t come inside to visit.

It’s been an unrelenting nine months for Short and other long-term care facility staff and residents across Washington, with more than half of the state’s coronavirus deaths linked to long-term care.

Some of her coworkers at the Yakima County nursing home have quit or retired. Short, a nurse of more than 25 years, has endured more than one outbreak.

But she’s still optimistic — because the vaccine has arrived in Washington and is due soon in the state’s nursing homes.

It could bring relief to workers and residents, who health officials have said will be prioritized along with health care workers at high risk. The state’s goal is for all to receive the first dose of the two-dose vaccine by the end of January, said Michele Roberts, acting assistant secretary for the state Department of Health.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for emergency use Friday, setting off a flurry of action to begin vaccinating the state’s more than 170,000 residents and employees in long-term care facilities. On Monday morning, 3,900 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine arrived at UW Medical Center in Seattle, and the FDA will review a vaccine from Moderna and the National Institutes of Health this week.

Most of the state’s approximately 4,000 long-term care facilities are expected to begin receiving vaccines sometime after Dec. 28 under a federal partnership with CVS and Walgreens.

“I see it as something that will help,” Short said. “If enough of us get vaccinated.”

Still, she had questions. How should she prepare for possible side effects? And how might her facility contend with short staffing if some of her co-workers needed time off because of a reaction to the vaccine?

“Amazing organizational feat“

As health officials rapidly prepare for a daunting logistical challenge, similar questions have surfaced from a weary workforce and from facility administrators, who also worry about how quickly the vaccines will arrive. And some experts are concerned about vaccination requirements that may slow a successful rollout.

The stakes could hardly be higher, as nursing homes and other long-term care facilities endure one of the harshest spates of outbreaks yet this year.

In all, 10,492 people who visited or work or live in nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, adult family homes and supported-living facilities have tested positive for the virus, up by more than 500 cases from the week before. More than 1,500 of them have died since the first outbreak in the U.S. began unfolding in late February at the Life Care Center of Kirkland, where more than a fourth of the 120 residents died.

More than two-thirds of the state’s 208 nursing homes have at least one active coronavirus case as of Monday.

Vaccinations will come to the facilities slowly at first, until the state unleashes a trove of doses later this month. The state is recommending nursing homes come first for vaccination before other long-term care facilities.

From the state’s initial shipment of 62,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 1,000 will be allocated this week to long-term care facilities through Consonus Pharmacy, which contracts with senior communities nationwide. Consonus plans to vaccinate 7,000 additional people as doses arrive.

The health department expects 402,000 doses by end of year, if the Moderna vaccine is also approved. It plans to set aside enough Pfizer doses to activate the federal program on Dec. 28 with CVS and Walgreens, which will handle vaccinations for more than 2,600 of the state’s long-term care facilities.

Vaccinating everyone at such facilities will be “an amazing organizational feat,” said Dr. Sabine von Preyss-Friedman, president of the Washington Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine and a member of a state COVID-19 advisory group.

But Von Preyss-Friedman, who is also medical director at Issaquah Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, still has concerns over what she views as “barriers” throughout the federal pharmacy partnership program.

For example, rather than allowing for electronic or verbal consent, the pharmacies will require each resident to sign a written consent form for the vaccine, an especially burdensome requirement at a time when residents’ families aren’t able to visit. Walgreens asked facilities to have the consent form signed the day of vaccination, which adds another challenge, according to materials sent to state officials last week.

Read the original story here.