(Company photo) Coronavirus vaccines protect residents and staff in skilled nursing facilities against more contagious variants of the virus, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of an outbreak of a more contagious variant in a Kentucky nursing home.  The study reported that the first case identified was in a health-care worker at the facility who had symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, but had not been vaccinated. Only 53 percent of the health-care workers at the facility had been vaccinated, the study said, while 90% of the residents had.  The outbreak and the study provided a test of vaccines against the more contagious variant, which had not been identified until the outbreak.