President Joe Biden plans to announce Wednesday that his administration will require nursing homes to vaccinate their staff against the coronavirus in order to receive federal funding, a person familiar with the matter said.
The new requirement will apply to more than 15,000 facilities that currently participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, according to the person who discussed the policy before the president’s remarks on condition of anonymity.
As many as 1.3 million people working in nursing homes would fall under the new requirement, according to estimates by the Biden administration. Many of those workers, though, are already vaccinated against the virus.
The White House has said it is searching for ways to leverage federal funding to encourage more Americans to get vaccinated as the delta variant of the virus surges and only 77.2% of the adult population has received at least one dose of the vaccine.
The administration announced earlier Wednesday that it will start offering booster shots on Sept. 20 to all vaccinated adults.
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