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The nation´s largest nursing home chain told its workers this week they will have to receive the COVID-19 vaccination or risk losing their jobs.

On Monday, Genesis Healthcare, which has 70,000 employees at nearly 400 nursing homes and senior communities, announced a 'universal' COVID-19 policy for all employees. 

Employees have three weeks to comply or risk termination. 

The announcement comes with the understanding that 40% of U.S. nursing home workers still have not gotten the shot. 

'While we would have greatly preferred a strictly voluntary process, our commitment to health and safety outweighs concerns about imposing a requirement,' Harry Wilson, Genesis HealthCare's CEO, said in a statement Tuesday. 

'Universal COVID-19 vaccination provides the safest and most effective course of action to ensure the health and welfare of our patients, residents and staff,' he added.

More than 1,250 nursing home residents across the U.S. were infected with COVID-19 in the week ending July 25, double the number from the week earlier, and 202 died, according to federal data.

'It´s so easy now to say, ´Well, Genesis is doing it. Now we´ll do it,'' said Brian Lee, who leads Families for Better Care, an advocacy group for long-term care residents. 'This is a big domino to fall.'

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University, said he likewise foresees a 'snowball effect.' He said resisting vaccination mandates at this point is 'unconscionable.'

But Genesis isn't the only company requiring their employees to 'vax up.' Additional companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, are following suit when it comes to requiring employees to get vaccinated.   

Just yesterday, Microsoft announced all staff working at its US offices will have to show proof of their COVID-19 vaccination from September.

The company announced the new requirement, which will also apply to vendors and guests in their buildings, in a public statement Tuesday.

It follows similar moves by fellow tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google.

They join an ever-growing list of companies, including Netflix, Walmart and Disney who will require employees to vaccinate to work in-person.

'As we have done since the beginning of the pandemic, we continue to closely track new developments and adapt our plans as this situation evolves, keeping employee health and safety top of mind,' Microsoft said.

The company has also pushed back its scheduled date for full re-opening of their buildings from September 7 until October 4. 

In addition, The New York Times and The Washington Post are also requiring their employees to show proof of their vaccination. 

In a memo sent out last week, The Post's CEO Fred Ryan told staff they must demonstrate proof of vaccination as a condition of their employment when returning to the office on Oct. 18. 

'Even though the overwhelming majority of Post employees have already provided proof of vaccination, I do not take this decision lightly,' he said. 

'However, in considering the serious health issues and genuine safety concerns of so many Post employees, I believe the plan is the right one.'   

Some local governments are also taking the decision out of the industry´s hands, with Massachusetts and Denver announcing mandatory vaccinations at nursing homes this week.

The question has become more urgent as the highly contagious delta variant drives up new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. to about 90,000 a day on average - the most since mid-February - and sends hospitalizations surging in states like Florida and Louisiana to the highest levels since the pandemic began.

Despite the terrible toll taken by the disease at nursing homes, many of the nation´s 15,000 such institutions have rejected mandatory vaccinations for fear large numbers of workers will quit. Nearly a quarter of nursing homes are already short of nurses or nurse´s aides.

But Associated Press interviews this past week with managers at 10 mostly smaller nursing home operations across the nation that are requiring vaccines found that the threat of workers quitting en masse over the shots may be overblown, with those numbers far lower than expected.

After Canterbury Court in Atlanta announced a mandate in January, CEO Debi McNeil was so fearful of a 'massive walkout' that she brought in medical experts to talk to workers, met with holdouts one-on-one and invited staff to gather in the community room for meetings that occasionally got heated.

In the end, only 10 of 180 workers quit, and McNeil said Canterbury´s nursing home, independent living and assisted living facilities have reported no new COVID-19 cases since February.

'It was a gamble that paid off for us,' McNeil said. 'I thought more people would have mandated it by now.'

At Jewish Home Family in Rockleigh, New Jersey, only five of 527 workers at its nursing home and assisted-living facilities quit. Westminster Village in Bloomington, Illinois, lost only two out of 250.

'It´s important to educate, but at some point we have to end this pandemic,' said Scott Crabtree, CEO of Lambeth House in New Orleans, which lost only 10 of 200 workers after it started requiring shots when they became available last year. 'When do we say, `Enough is enough?´´´

More than 130,000 nursing home residents in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, making such institutions by far the deadliest place to be during the pandemic. About 80% of residents have been vaccinated, double the rate for staff, according to the government.

Some workers have rejected the vaccine because they think it was rushed into development and is unsafe, or they feel protected because they already got COVID-19.

'It´s too soon to put that crap in my body,' said Christina Chiger, a nurse´s aide at a nursing home in Tampa, Florida. 'It took how many years to perfect the polio vaccine? This was done in months.'

Others have been swayed by false rumors that the vaccine was made from dead babies or contains microchips or will make you infertile. That last notion concerned Michaela Murray, a nurse's aide at an Alabama nursing home that made vaccinations mandatory.

'I was kind of worried, but I talked to the doctors and they put my mind at ease,' said Murray, who agreed to get a vaccine to keep her job at Hanceville Nursing & Rehab Center, which had only six of 260 workers quit. 'I had had COVID and didn´t want to go through that again.'

Pennsylvania-based Genesis said volunteer vaccinations were appropriate earlier in the pandemic, but not now, as the more infectious variant spreads and only 65% of its staff has received shots. Genesis is giving employees until Aug. 23 to get their first shot.

'To succeed against the delta variant is going to require much higher vaccination rates,' said Chief Medical Officer Richard Feifer. 'Our tactics in the fight have to change.'

Jennifer Moore of Hollywood, Florida, whose husband is living at a nursing home where only 35% of the staff is vaccinated, said it´s also a matter of ethics.

'Whenever I see a story about somebody being anti-vax, I just want to scream,' said Moore, whose husband, Thomas, has Parkinson´s disease. 'I understand people have concerns about the vaccine, but these people are working with the most vulnerable population. They have a duty to their patients.'

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