For nurses, what the virus gave, the vaccines take away

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, they could earn more than $10,000 a week, and that did not even include paid housing accommodation.

But as new COVID-19 cases continue to slide in the US, the demand for traveling nurses is also rapidly declining.

"A lot of travelers are getting canceled out of locations where there was a crisis need," said Heather Kylen, a nurse and travel-nurse recruiter at Atlas MedStaff, a staff agency in Omaha, Nebraska. "We are just seeing less jobs. I would estimate at least 25 percent lower than it was just a month ago. It's slowly reducing even more."

Now there is an overabundance of travel nurses due to many nurses who left their permanent positions at the height of the pandemic for temporary positions to earn more money, she said.

As the pandemic unfolded across the country, many hospitals had a shortage of existing nursing staff and recruited travel nurses to take temporary assignments. They became a critical source of backup in COVID-19 hot spots.

The demand for travel nurses was especially high from December to January at the height of the post-holiday spike as sick and dying patients overwhelmed the healthcare system. The demand began falling in February after vaccinations ramped up, Kylen said.

The current seven-day moving average of new cases, which is 53,200, dropped 78.7 percent compared with the peak on Jan 11. It fell 20.9 percent compared with the second highest peak on July 23, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Jill Eliassen, vice-president of clinical services at Traveling Nurse Across America, said the need for the nurses increased "well over 125 percent" starting in late 2020 but it is leveling out. The agency is one of the country's largest for traveling nurses.

She described the curve in demand for the nurses "like riding a roller coaster through this pandemic" and attributed the causes to vaccine distribution, social distancing, mask-wearing measures and seasonal weather changes.

Travelers typically work under a short-term contract that ranges from four to 13 weeks. With the surge in demand from hospitals during the health crisis, they were often asked to extend their contracts and were earning hefty pay, along with accommodation.

Now the salary for the nurses is "going back down to their normal rates", said Kylen.