Roughly 37 percent of the staff at the state-run Iowa Veterans Home are refusing to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

That’s a decrease from the 46 percent refusal rate reported several weeks ago, but still leaves dozens of caretakers of Iowa’s elderly veterans unprotected.

Laurel Degelau, executive assistant for Iowa Veterans Home Commandant Timon Oujiri, said Tuesday that while 93 percent of the home’s resident veterans have chosen to get the COVID-19 vaccine, only 63 percent of the staff has chosen to do so.

“Once again, IVH, because of the dedication and education provided residents, families and staff, are well ahead of the national average,” Oujiri recently told the American Legion of Iowa, citing reports that suggest only 37 percent of the workers in America’s long-term care facilities are agreeing to be vaccinated.

Many of the workers at the Iowa Veterans Home are state-licensed or state-certified health care providers tasked with caring for elderly veterans for whom the coronavirus is particularly dangerous. According to state and federal data, about 42 percent of the Iowans who have died of the virus were residents of nursing facilities like the Iowa Veterans Home.

To date, at least five of the home’s 415 residents have died of the virus.

Vaccines were first offered at the Marshalltown home the week of Jan. 10, when 46 percent of the staff were refusing the vaccine. Since then, the home has been conducting educational seminars for workers on all three shifts, with the goal of informing workers of the positive aspects of receiving the vaccine.

At a Jan. 27 press conference, Gov. Kim Reynolds declined to say whether employees at state-run care facilities should be required to get the vaccine, referring the question to Kelly Garcia, the head of the Iowa Department of Public Health and Iowa Department of Human Services.

“Right now, we are not making it a condition of employment, and that really is to give everyone an opportunity to make the choice,” Garcia said at the time. “We want to make sure our employees feel comfortable and have all of the material available at their fingertips to make the decisions that are best for them.”

The state is not disclosing vaccination-acceptance rates at Iowa’s 440 privately run nursing homes.

More than a third of Iowa Veterans Home staff still refuse vaccine