New Haven issues shot mandate

As high transmission rate persists, city employees must get vaccine or face weekly testing

The city of New Haven will require its employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing beginning Sept. 27, the city announced Friday afternoon.

“[With] the concerns around serving the public as city employees, and making sure that the employees feel safe with each others as peers ... it’s really critical to us to be able to have something that is thoughtful,” New Haven Health Director Maritza Bond said. “Within New Haven County we are still within high transmission with our 14-day case rate . ... We use a 14-day average and right now we’re seeing about 19 [cases] per 100,000 in the city of New Haven.”

All Connecticut counties except for Tolland and Windham are categorized as high transmission, which is considered the most severe by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with an average of at least 100 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people or a positivity rate of 10% of higher over the course of a week.

Bond said that the city is still seeing an increase in positive COVID-19 cases and that the city employee vaccine mandate comes after establishing a better system to track vaccinations or testing.

“We had to establish and work through developing a portal that was going to No.1 be HIPAA compliant to ensure the safety of information and No. 2 we wanted to make sure that we were instituting different workflows for the different users that are going to be involved in using this particular portal,” Bond explained. “For example, the health department will be responsible for the vaccine verification of each of the employees and there will be a set up team and there’s specific parameters that will be established.”

Employees will need to have proof of their vaccinations by Sept. 27, or submit to weekly testing, and upload their results on the portal, every Thursday.

There’s no option for a medical or religious exemption.

“Our order, or mandate, requires you to get vaccinated or to get tested,” Mayor Justin Elicker said. “We spent a lot of time, as you can imagine, talking about this, and based on labor implications, and balancing out the health implications, we felt like this was the best approach. We are going to see how this goes, and we’ll explore down the road whether we need to make an exemption that is more rigorous to be a part of this, but at the moment, this is where planned it.”

Elicker said that they’re unsure how many city employees are already vaccinated, but “this will help us in the next several weeks to get a very good idea.”

About 68% of New Haven residents 12 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 61% are fully vaccinated.

New Haven has 58 Covid-19related hospitalizations, Bond said.