President Joe Biden yesterday announced that nursing homes that want to keep their federal funding will have to make sure their staff is vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Those who work in a nursing home and serve people on Medicare or Medicaid will be required to get vaccinated.

More than 130,000 residents in nursing homes have died since the start of the pandemic.

The move could affect more than 15,000 nursing homes, which employ more than 1 million people in the United States.

Alfonso Garcia is a nursing assistant at Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center. He says he doesn’t want to get the coronavirus vaccine for personal reasons, saying in part, “I just feel like my body, my choice, and we really don't know what the long-term effects are like, what's going to happen later on.”

Stuart Almer, CEO of Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, welcomes the mandate.

“We are pleased to see the mandate. We believe this gets us most closer to the goal of becoming COVID safe ultimately,” says Almer.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, about 40% of nursing home employees are not vaccinated.  

All state health care workers must be vaccinated by Sept. 27. There will be narrow exceptions for those with religious or medical reasons.