Lamont details priority vaccine access

Six conditions named that will move people near head of the line

Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday which six conditions will qualify residents to receive priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine, beginning Thursday.

Those with sickle cell disease, end-stage renal disease or Down syndrome, are in active cancer treatment, have organ transplants or are patients of Connecticut Children’s Hospital and Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital are considered high-risk and will receive priority.

“You may remember going back a couple months the CDC had a list, a very big list that included more than a million people in the state of Connecticut, it included mild obesity and smoking, it was nothing that we

thought we could deal with as a separate category,” Lamont said.

But he said Josh Geballe, the state's chief operating officer, has now met with the chief medical officers of the state's hospitals asking them to prioritize the riskiest conditions and offering to provide additional vaccines, so they can take care of these people "on a very timely basis.”

Lamont said hospitals are reaching out to those in the six categories to make sure they're “close to the front of the line" as the state opens up vaccines to all age groups on Thursday.

He said many of the risk categories outlined in the CDC list have been addressed “by getting two/thirds of people 45 and above vaccinated,” as that's where the bulk of those with high-risk factors are.

Geballe said there are about 10,000 people in the state between the ages of 16 and 44 who fit within the six medically high-risk categories. While he doesn't anticipate hospitals will need additional vaccines in the coming weeks, the state is providing additional vaccines to the children's hospitals in the next two weeks. He described what prioritized access will look like.

“You'll see some hospitals doing dedicated clinics, some doing outreach with reserved appointment slots for people with these conditions, and in some cases people will simply get vaccinated during their normal doctor's appointment at the hospital that may already be scheduled over the next couple weeks,” Geballe said.

He added that chief medical officers at Connecticut hospitals chose these high-risk categories because they wanted to make sure such patients had easier access to vaccines during the next week or so. When asked if a medical provider is free to add asthma, for example, to the list of high-risk categories, Geballe said there's no regulation barring it from doing so.

In addition, Lamont said the state is also going to focus on vaccinating people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the coming weeks.

"We've got about half of folks with developmental disabilities vaccinated, many of them were in congregate housing," Lamont said, adding that the state is going to prioritize outreach to young people with developmental disabilities by bringing mobile vaccination vans to them.

Lamont also discussed measures to vaccinate high school and college students as well as a new FEMA vaccination van that will be operating in Connecticut during the next two months during Monday's news briefing.

Colleges and universities will host Johnson & Johnson vaccine clinics in early May prior to the end of spring semester. High schools will host Pfizer clinics for students 16 or older, with low-performing school districts in late April and early May and all interested districts in May.

Lamont said the state is targeting students as younger people are accounting for a greater portion of positive COVID-19 test results, and since students are one of the final populations to receive their vaccines. He said he wants to prevent the virus from spreading as schools let out for the summer.

He touted the “first-in-thenation” FEMA mobile vaccination unit that opened Monday in Bridgeport.

FEMA will be deploying other such units elsewhere in the country in the coming days. A van is going to spend 10 days in Bridgeport before moving on to 16 other communities. Norwich and New London will be the van's 13th and 14th stops, respectively.

The governor also gave an update on COVID-19 vaccination statistics. He said 41% of all adults aged 16-plus have received at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Of those aged 65-plus, 80% have received their first dose; 61% of people between the ages of 55 and 64 have received their first dose and 38% of people between the ages of 45 and 54. A total of 1,828,260 doses have been administered with 684,200 people fully vaccinated, and 1,189,197 first doses having been administered. Lamont urged those in the 45-to-54-year-old age group to take one of the approximately 240,000 vaccination appointments available this week.

Since Friday, 3,229 additional cases of COVID-19 were reported throughout the state, bringing the total to 308,439. More than 91,000 tests have been reported since Friday for a total of 7,643,087. The positivity rate is now at 3.53%.

As opposed to last week, when hospitalizations were down, since Friday 42 more people have been hospitalized, bringing the total number of people now hospitalized in the state to 498.

There have been 18 more deaths during the past three days, bringing the number of total COVID-19-related deaths to 7,883.

Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London reported Monday that it had six COVID-19 hospitalizations while Westerly Hospital had none.

New London County has had 20,582 cumulative cases of COVID-19 and 421 deaths, according to state data.