Data: COVID vaccine boosters lag in CT as fourth shots approved

While Connecticut continues to be among the most vaccinated states in the country, the number of residents who received booster shots is still lagging, the latest figures show.

And soon, a portion of those people who received an initial booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines will be eligible for a second booster, or a fourth dose total of the vaccine.

As of this week, 87.2 percent of Connecticut’s adult population had received the initial course of the vaccine and are considered “fully vaccinated,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This figure puts Connecticut among the states with the highest percentage of the population vaccinated.

However, of those fully vaccinated adults in Connecticut, roughly half — 55.1 percent — have received a booster, the data shows.

The lagging boosters come amid a time of predominantly low COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. On Wednesday, the state reported a positivity rate of 3.35 percent with 458 new infections found among 13,654 tests. Hospitalizations fell by a net of three patients for a total of 98.

While COVID-19 metrics remain stable in Connecticut, there is growing concern across the globe over the BA.2 strain, a subvariant of omicron, which dramatically drove up infections and hospitalizations in the state and elsewhere.

“(They’ve) got a little variant there in Britain that’s spiking up a little bit, obviously, you know what’s going on in Hong Kong, so it’s not like the party is over. We’ve got to still be prepared. The more older people continue to get vaccinated or even boosted, the safer we’ll all be,” Gov. Ned Lamont said Wednesday.

Following approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, residents age 50 and older who received a PfizerBioNTech or Moderna booster at least four months ago will soon be eligible for another booster dose of the vaccine.

On a personal note, Lamont said he plans to get a second booster.

“I’m the opposite of an anti-vaxxer,” he said. “I said I got my other arm right here. I’m ready to go.”

He said it’s been six months since he got his first booster and, “I’m old.”

Some experts in Connecticut have questioned the timing of the fourth dose of the vaccine, considering COVID-19 activity has been fairly low.

“I don’t think it’s smart to just run out and get that fourth shot,” said Art Caplan, a Ridgefield resident and founder of the bioethics department at NYU Langone. “I’m not going to go get one yet.

I’m going to wait to see if the rates start to rise or if a new variant starts to manifest.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s approval from FDA for a fourth dose of the vaccine, Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare, said, “I think they’re worried about BA.2. That’s basically what they’re basing their decision on.”

Wu, who would be eligible, said he will base his decision to get another dose on COVID-19 transmission in the community.

“It depends where we are with the epidemiology,” he said. “I’ll probably have to make a decision for the health system as well. A lot of it involves predicting. If I think that the curve is flattened and the numbers are going to drop, I will probably not, and I will wait.”

While the exact breakdown was not immediately clear, there have been nearly 865,000 people in the state age 50 and over who have received an additional dose, or a booster, of the vaccine. It is unclear from the CDC figures what number of those residents received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine dose as a booster.

Federal regulators allow for a “mix-and-match” approach to boosters, in which a person can get a different brand of vaccine from their initial course.