U.S. Federal deadline is here for unvaccinated U.S. medical workers

The details: Last month, the Supreme Court allowed the mandate for health-care workers to go forward in facilities receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds. The vaccine rule covers roughly 10.4 million staff at 76,000 facilities. 

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it was moving “full speed ahead” on the mandate in a letter earlier this month.

The timeline: Health-care workers in roughly half the states had to get their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Jan. 27. 

But the effective dates were staggered, since the rule had been originally blocked in Republican-led states that argued the federal government didn’t have the power to require the shots. As of yesterday, staff in 24 other states had to have had at least one shot, and workers in the last state — Texas — must be vaccinated next week. 

• “At the health system level or local level when mandates have gone into effect, there's been relatively low amounts of people leaving their jobs,” said MaryBeth Musumeci, an associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “So we'll have to see if that pattern plays out in this broader initiative.”

It’s still early so there’s not yet data on how many health-care workers around the country are vaccinated. (Though there are for nursing homes, and on average, nearly 83 percent of staff per facility are vaccinated). But a CMS spokesperson said the agency has heard from states and providers that compliance is going well.  ...