About two-thirds of North Dakota’s nursing home staff have been vaccinated for COVID-19, which is below where the industry and advocates for the elderly would like to see it.

“The more people we can have vaccinated, the higher protection we can afford everybody within that facility,” said Shelly Peterson, executive director for the North Dakota Long Term Care Association. “Our goal is to offer as much protection as possible.”

She cited data submitted in early August that showed 90.55% of long-term care residents had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 89.34% had full vaccination. For staff, it was 66.8% with one dose and 65% for full vaccination.

“I hope that continues to inch up and it has been,” Peterson said. “Every week they’ve been inching up.”

The AARP nursing home dashboard showed 64.7% of staff vaccinated in late July in North Dakota.

Data as of July 25 showed local vaccination rates varying widely among nursing homes. At Trinity Homes in Minot. 83% of residents and 65.6% of staff had been vaccinated. At Minot Health and Rehab, 80% of residents and 66.5% of staff were vaccinated. Heart of America in Rugby had achieved 100% vaccination of residents and 82.6% of staff, but some other area nursing facilities were much farther behind, with staff vaccinations in the range of 30-58%.

The national standard is 75% staff vaccination, which only 24% of North Dakota nursing homes had met early this month, according to AARP.

North Dakota ranks high nationally for resident vaccinations and in the mid-range for staff when compared with other states, Peterson said.

“We don’t want to be average,” said Peterson, who set a goal for association members to achieve a staff vaccination rate of 80%. The ultimate goal would be 100% vaccination, though, she said.

“The vaccine has absolutely made a difference and has drastically impacted our death rate,” Peterson said. “Right now, I believe with our much higher vaccination rates than the rest of North Dakota, we are one of the safest environments. We have very few infections.”

As of Thursday, there were 21 long-term care staff with COVID-19 and only one resident, according to State Health Department data. Peterson compared those numbers with the peak of 1,630 cases in staff and residents on a day in November 2020.

The Long Term Care Association provides a daily COVID-19 update to its facilities, offering the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Medicaid and Medicare. The association also has facilitated access to other educational materials. Some facilities early on offered financial incentives to encourage staff vaccinations. The state’s 17 Good Samaritan facilities, part of Sanford Health, are under a mandate for all staff to be vaccinated by Nov. 1.

“We issued a call that nursing homes should require vaccination for their staffs and residents,” AARP State Director Josh Askvig said of his organization.

“Our stance is that staff should be vaccinated to protect the more vulnerable who are in nursing homes,” he said. “We certainly don’t want to end up where we were last fall in North Dakota, where we were seeing a high level of deaths.”

Although nursing home residents have a high rate of vaccination, Askvig said virus variants continue to emerge, increasing the risk of breakthrough cases. He said North Dakota so far hasn’t seen breakthrough cases become prevalent in nursing homes, but that needs to be guarded against.

“We have a vaccine, and we should not let preventable problems happen,” he said.

With the small number of cases at this time, Peterson said, the vast majority of facilities are open to outside visitation. If a COVID-19 case is discovered in a facility, visitation is halted and every staff member and resident must be tested, regardless of vaccination status. If the case is isolated, the facility can temporarily shut down that portion of the facility while allowing visitation to occur in other parts of the building.

The protocols are recommended for assisted living and basic care as well.