Nearly every employment attorney in California is cautioning businesses to not make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory, only to encourage it.
The reason relates to employment discrimination, issues of fairness, and protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Even so, homecare clients often ask about the vaccination status of their caregiver or nurse, which is personal health information protected under HIPAA.
In certain cases, a homecare agency can disclose the vaccination status, but a best practice is to only do that with the explicit written permission of the homecare employee. At Home Nursing Care, Inc. is working on a system to handle those requests fairly and discretely.
In the meantime, the strongest protection for homecare clients is to be vaccinated themselves. The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines have shown to protect against the most serious complications from COVID-19, and they have been shown to reduce occurrence of the disease by 50 % after the first does, and 95% after the second.
Johnson & Johnson recently had a single dose vaccine approved, which after 28 days was 100 percent effective preventing deaths and hospitalizations from COVID-19 in clinical trials. It was 85.4% effective at blocking severe and critical cases.
All CDC guidelines, infection control and social distancing rules while receiving homecare should be followed, regardless of vaccination status.
