The vaccination rate among home health workers in New York as a deadline arrived on Thursday for them to get Covid shots was about 86 percent, exceeding the expectations of some union and industry leaders and suggesting thousands may have made a last-minute decision to be inoculated, according to preliminary state data.
But the state’s survey of agencies providing home health care also showed that at least 34,000 workers appeared to have missed the deadline to get vaccinated under the new state mandate, rendering them unable to work and deepening a labor shortage in the industry.
Some industry leaders had predicted that as few as 70 percent of workers were likely to be vaccinated before the deadline, and the higher-than-expected rate suggested some workers may have chosen to be immunized to save their jobs.
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