‘List Your Husband As An Employee’: How A Senior Care Company Played Loose With Vaccination Rules

In January, a long-term care company with coveted access to COVID-19 vaccines invited executives and developers to schedule shots for friends and family.

For much of the United States, January 2021 was the darkest hour of the COVID-19 pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of new cases per week and millions desperate to claim a vaccine that was in extremely short supply. But for a group of people with connections to New Standard Senior Living of New Jersey, getting the shot proved easy. The senior housing company had priority access to the coronavirus vaccine, and a company executive invited her fellow executives, the housing developers behind the company’s newest building project, owners of the construction company on that project, and back office staff to get a vaccine — and to bring friends and family. On Jan. 21, the company vaccinated more than 150 people, many of whom had no routine interactions with long-term care residents or even jobs in the health care field. The location was a still under-construction senior housing complex in Millville, New Jersey, where there were no residents or senior staff. And a majority of those receiving shots wound up being the construction workers who were racing to bring the company’s new 154-unit senior living community to completion.