New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
With mass vaccination centers, push is on to reach vulnerable
As the state pivots to a new age-based vaccination schedule, it will rely on mass vaccination centers across the state to solve a problem that has vexed the rollout — getting more shots to the state’s minority, mostly city-dwelling residents.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration announced Monday it was abandoning its previous vaccination plan, which prioritized essential workers and those with certain medical conditions, in favor of an agebased rollout because, state officials said, it would allow the state to rapidly vaccinate more people. The only group specifically prioritized under the new plan are school employees and child care workers.
While mass vaccination sites — such as the one built on an air strip at Rentschler Field in East Hartford — have helped the state’s overall vaccination numbers rank among the best in the country, they have not reached the state’s most vulnerable populations, who so far have been left behind.
State officials expect there to be a growing number of mass vaccination sites, with new ones opening in the coming weeks at both of the state’s tribal casinos and Sacred Heart University. Pharmacies are getting a separate influx of federal vaccine to handle the roughly 650,000 people in the next group of eligible residents in the 55-64 age group.
After studying their own vaccination numbers, the state’s hospitals — which are operating many of these mass vaccination sites — are also trying different techniques to reach the minority population they have so far missed.
Those techniques run the
gamut, ranging from making reverse 911 calls in New Haven to sending out blast text messages to eligible populations in Hartford, and while those outreach efforts are time-consuming and expensive, hospital officials say the people getting the shots are the ones who most need them.
“We know we have hesitancy in the African American community, and we may only get 10 people to show up in the church basement for a clinic — but that’s 10 people that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten vaccinated, and if that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we will do,” said Griffin Hospital CEO Pat Charmel, whose hospital has partnered with religious leaders to hold clinics in Ansonia.
“You need a small army to do some of this work, but I think it’s a one-time thing, and if we do it and make the investment, then I think we can get it done.”
To ensure that the mass vaccination clinics reach the vulnerable populations, the state is asking vaccinators to either schedule clinics for individuals or groups specifically invited through the federal VAMS system under what is called “third party VAMS,” or to carve out time for certain populations by
reserving appointments for people from certain ZIP codes at their mass vaccination sites.
Many hospitals said they have already started doing that by using ZIP codes to block out clinics.
Dr. James Cardon, Hartford HealthCare’s chief clinical integration officer, said when someone puts the ZIP code of their home address into the system, “it opens up a bunch of schedules that somebody from another ZIP code won’t see.”
“That really does allow us a very clear way to reserve appointments,” Cardon said. “If people call into our Access Center for those that can’t go into the digital front door, the folks that are answering the phone have access to schedules that the general public does not.”
Parsing out doses will become even more critical as more vaccines enter the system. On Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont announced that the state could receive up to 30,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as early as next week.
That would bring the state up to around 100,000 doses weekly, not counting a high influx of vaccines going to CVS and Walgreens.