New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Everyone age 16 and older likely vaccine eligible April 5, Lamont says
“Unless the world shifts on its axis,” Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday, all Connecticut residents 16 and older will be eligible for the COVID vaccine by April 5 — nearly a month ahead of the original schedule.
State officials are hopeful that federally controlled supply, coupled with existing infrastructure, can meet the demand of opening vaccines to nearly all Connecticut residents in three weeks.
In a two-step process, the state will first open eligibility to those age 45 to 54 — about 480,000 residents — on Friday, three days ahead of schedule.
The second step will open vaccine appointments April 5 to everyone age 16 to 44 — a group that includes about 1.3 million people.
“There will be a bit of a rush. So if you are relatively healthy, maybe you don’t have to go to work every day, you can telecommute, if perhaps you think you’ve had some kind of a mild infection in the past, maybe don’t sign up that very first few days ... we are going to have plenty of vaccines over the course of the next month,” Lamont said.
While the new plan now lumps those age 35 to 44 and those 16 to 34 together, Lamont’s Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe said the state thinks all those who want a vaccine should be able to get a first dose within weeks.
“By the time we get to late April or early May, most everyone in Connecticut who is eager to get access and get vaccinated should have that opportunity. And then the game will change to continuing to work to drive those rates up across the board in all our communities,” Geballe said.
Geballe’s estimated timeline factors in that a number of people in these age groups have already been vaccinated and that state officials anticipate a percentage won’t immediately want to get vaccinated. Lamont and others said Monday that they expect demand to be less significant among the younger age groups.
Though state officials have described April 5 as a tentative date for universal eligibility, Lamont was confident the date will hold for the rollout.
“Unless the world shifts on its axis, I am feeling pretty good about April 5,” Lamont said.
The state also announced they will work with providers to “accelerate access” for those with high-risk medical conditions when they become eligible
for vaccines.
“We are going to make a big effort to make sure those folks that are most at risk move to the front of the line,” Lamont said. Officials are still working on plans to get access for those with certain medical conditions.
Lamont’s vaccine rollout announcement came as the state recorded a 2.95 percent positivity rate through the weekend on new COVID-19 tests. Hospitalizations increased by 26 patients to a total of
407 statewide. Deaths increased by 23 to 7,788 fatalities.
With mass vaccination clinics operating across the state, providers have said they have the capacity to handle many more appointments per week than the tightly controlled supply allows.
“Our vaccine providers are ready to do far more. For weeks, they’ve been begging us for more vaccine . ... They are ready to go,” Geballe said.
While state officials are confident the distribution network can handle the massive influx of those seeking appointments, supply remains a limiting factor.
Connecticut has seen roughly 150,000 first doses of the vaccine entering the state each week from the federal government. By early April, Lamont said the state expects to receive 200,000 vaccine doses a week.
“That allows us to be a little more aggressive,” Lamont said of the anticipated increase in vaccine supply.
Lamont’s announcement comes on the heels of President Joe Biden’s request last week that states open eligibility to all adults by May 1 or sooner. Under Connecticut’s previous plan, universal adult eligibility started on May 3.
“Achieving universal access to vaccines for all adults by May is a bold, aggressive goal coming from President Biden, and this is the kind of leadership that is necessary to get our state and our country back to normal,” Lamont said last week. “On behalf of the people of Connecticut: I accept this challenge.”
With a new schedule that beats Biden’s request by three weeks, Lamont said: “This is a change we felt we could make and do it efficiently.”
By Monday, 31 percent of all Connecticut residents 16 and older — most of them 55 and older, health care workers and those living and working in certain congregate settings — had received at least the first dose of the vaccine.
After opening eligibility to those age 75 and older and those 65 to 74, Connecticut shifted to an agebased vaccine rollout, instead of prioritizing essential workers and those with high-risk medical conditions.
This rollout plan also prioritized 160,000 teachers, school workers and child care professionals, who became eligible on March 3.
Since eligibility opened March 3 for those age 55 to 64, about 40 percent of these residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, the state’s data shows. Vaccine eligibility was scheduled to expand to those age 45 to 54 on March 22, those 35 to 44 on April 12 and everyone 16 and older on May 3.
State officials said Monday more than 1.3 million doses of the vaccine had been administered, roughly 918,000 of which were first doses. The total of first doses include 35,000 one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
For East Hartford resident Torrina Evans, it’s about long, stressful nights spent figuring out how to make ends meet on the low pay she draws in disabilities services.
For Woodbury’s Deborah Schultz, it comes down to how much more she’ll have to shell out in retirement, dipping into a lifetime of earnings she and her husband saved over the years.
Dozens more weighed in Monday, as the Connecticut General Assembly initiated debate on a trio of bills that would reshape portions of the state’s tax code — notably to include what many are describing as a “mansion” tax, which would allow the state to collect property taxes on homes worth more than $430,000 as determined by municipal clerks.
On Monday, Gov. Ned Lamont said he was “not supportive” of the tax proposals discussed in the Connecticut General Assembly session.
“We just got $10 billion from the federal government — some of it [is] direct payments that will be a shot in the arm for our economy, and about half of it which we have discretion over which will be helpful for education, for rent relief, .. for our not-for-profits,” Lamont said. “I’m going to be working closely with the legislature to figure out what our priorities are for that money. I think we’re in pretty good shape right now.”
Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, proposed the mansion tax in January. It would allow the Connecticut Department of Revenue to collect taxes equal to the rate of one mill on real estate values, with the first $300,000 exempted on the assessed value on any home and no exemption for commercial properties. (One mill is equal to a dollar on $1,000 of assessed value.)
“My husband and I live in a 2,600-square-foot home, which we love, but is by no means a mansion,” Schultz said at a public hearing of the legislative Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.
“The proposed ‘mansion tax’ is an insult to all taxpayers. It’s more accurate to call it the ‘let’s rob Peter to pay Paul tax.’ ... You and the legislature have for years been unable to properly manage, maintain and advance the taxpayers money that you have received.”
But Evans and others said the state needs to do a better job of apportioning how it taxes and spends — the “mansion tax” as a prime example — to help those lower down on the pay scale, or at least avoid making cuts that will hurt them even more.
“With the wages we earn, I find it very difficult to support my family,” said Evans, an East Hartford resident who works for the Oak Hill disabilities services agency. “We are being given crumbs as hazard pay and being asked to put our lives and our families’ lives on the line . ... Who would want to spend 40-plus hours a week doing backbreaking work for poverty wages?”
Roughly 300 members of the public — including advocacy groups, business owners, public officials and economists — filed their intent to testify Monday.
The discussion was a rehash of past years — do wealthy earners and businesses pay enough to the cash-strapped state? — couched inside a killer pandemic that has hit hardest the poorest pockets of the Connecticut economy.
Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, said Looney’s proposal was “designed to suck money out of the middle-class and send it directly to Hartford Democrats to redistribute at their discretion.”
“Stratford is not the land of mansions,” Kelly said. “It’s a town with a median income of just $38,000.”
Opponents of higher taxes in Connecticut have long countered that hikes only make it more difficult to keep jobs in Connecticut, whether as a result of corporations hiring here or executives’ choices for where to live.
Last week, Subway confirmed that it has opened a corporate office in Miami where new CEO John Chidsey has a Coral Gables home, at the expense of jobs at its Milford headquarters.
Mark Brault, a self-described lifelong resident who wants to stay in Connecticut, said he feels “pushed out” of the state by additional taxes. “We’ve enjoyed [Connecticut’s] glory days,” he said.
New Canaan resident James Basch said technologies like Zoom have enabled a mobile workforce, which makes it even more enticing for workers to relocate.
“We’re not just competing against New York or Massachusetts, which has around a 5 percent flat income tax rate,” Basch said. “We’re increasingly competing and losing to Texas, Florida and the Carolinas among other states. Spend some time in Fairfield County, if you don’t believe that people are leaving because of higher taxes.”
In addition to a number of tax code revisions, a bill co-sponsored by several Democratic senators would have the state make onetime payments of $500 to the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents who received unemployment benefits last year.
“In this pandemic-inspired downturn, the wealthiest individuals and families have been doing very well,” said David Gamage, an Indiana University law professor. “The most profitable corporations and largest businesses have been doing well. It’s the ordinary, Main Street economic activities that have been suffering. This is a great opportunity in these bills to address these longer-term imbalances... putting money in the hands of ordinary Americans and Connecticut residents and struggling, lower-income families has large beneficial economic effects.”
Against the argument that high earners and employers will leave, Connecticut advocates are pressing for tax changes to improve support for those with the direst needs.