By By Dan Hounsell

With arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in late 2020, hopes rose that workers in senior-care facilities — among the facilities hit hardest by the pandemic — would get the vaccine, stop the spread of the illness and speed the process of reopening these facilities. So far, those hopes have not played the way many planned.

Safety, efficacy and the newness of the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as distrust of the government, were among the major factors that long-term care and other healthcare workers cited as reasons for not receiving a coronavirus vaccine in a recent survey, according to McKnight’s Senior Living.

The Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post surveyed 1,327 frontline healthcare workers. As of early March, 52 percent of such staff members — including 50 percent of employees in assisted care facilities and nursing homes — said they had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccination rates were particularly low among long-term care and other healthcare workers who were Black, worked in lower-paying jobs or had attained relatively less education.