Vaccine Hesitancy Has Seeped Into Home Health Care
Many direct-care workers are unsure about the COVID-19 vaccines, leaving the people who depend on their labor that much more vulnerable.
There was the home health attendant who sucked her thumb before touching household items. And the one who brought her unvaccinated 4-year-old into the apartment where Mary and her immunocompromised husband live, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And the one who came by after her day shift at a nursing home.
Many of the aides who circulated through Mary’s household were vaccine-hesitant or outright anti-vax; many wore their mask improperly while in the apartment, she told me. A few came in with sneezes, sniffles, and coughs that—as Mary and her husband learned only after asking—were symptoms of an active COVID-19 infection.
Marion Renault
