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California now requires boosters, negative COVID test for most nursing home visits

Sacramento Bee - 1/7/2022

Jan. 7—Under a new state health order, people visiting residents of skilled nursing homes and similar adult care facilities in California must be fully vaccinated, boosted if eligible, and also produce a negative test result for COVID-19 in order to conduct most indoor visits.

Those who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated, as well as those who are eligible for a booster dose but have not yet received one, may conduct an outdoor visit but must still show evidence of a negative test result. Visitors must also wear a mask and physically distance from all except the resident they are visiting.

For both indoor and outdoor visits, visitors must provide either a negative PCR test result from within two days before the visit date or a negative antigen test result from within one day.

The California Department of Public Health announced the new requirements on New Year's Eve. The order went into effect Friday morning.

If a nursing home resident is unable to leave their room or go outdoors, the visitation can take place in the resident's room, regardless of the visitor's vaccination or test status, according to the order. But the visitor must wear a well-fitting mask with good filtration at all times and maintain physical distance from others. The visit cannot take place in a common area, or inside the resident's room if the resident's roommate is present.

The CDPH guidance says nursing facilities may offer onsite testing for visitors "if practical per facility testing capacity but are not required to do so."

"Given the greater transmissibility of the omicron variant, the risk of outbreaks in long-term care settings is of particular concern given the medical vulnerability of residents in such settings," CDPH director and state public health officer Dr. Tomás J. Aragón wrote in his statement amending the health order.

"Furthermore, based on the experience from prior COVID-19 surge periods during which high morbidity and mortality was experienced by residents and staff within such long-term care settings, the impact of such facility outbreaks may be devastating."

More than 9,400 of California's 76,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths have come in skilled nursing facility residents, according to state health department data dashboards. A vast majority of those fatalities happened before vaccines became available.

The visitation order will remain through at least Feb. 7, and CDPH will continue to assess conditions to determine whether it will be extended.

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