The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Data: More than 10,000 in state have had their second COVID-19 booster
About 100,000 people statewide have received a second COVID booster shot, according to state data released Thursday.
Federal health officials approved a second booster dose, which would be the fourth shot, of either Moderna or Pfizer's COVID vaccine for people 50 years old or who are immunocompromised.
So far, a total of 101,296 have received that second booster.
State Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani during a recent interview credited the state's high rate of COVID vaccinations with helping infected residents survive the disease.
As of Thursday, 2,723,731 had been fully vaccinated, with 1,502,563 residents getting the first booster.
“Our vaccination rate is very high in our state,” she said. “Our booster rate is good, could be 50 better. We're about 50 percent, could be better. So, we have room to go there. Second boosters, we're just rolling those out. So we can see what happens with that.”
Juthani said she “encouraged” eligible residents to get the second booster “because, quite frankly, I think the downside is pretty low and the upside is probably pretty good.”
Statewide, COVID-19 activity has crept up in recent weeks, since the omicron subvariant known as BA.2 became the dominant strain in the Northeast, though the seven-day average reported Thursday was largely flat from the previous day.
Of the 59,858 COVID tests reported to the state over the past seven days, 4,547 were positive — a rate of 7.6 percent.
Hospitalizations increased by 37 over the same time period for a total of 176 patients statewide. There were an additional 19 deaths attributed to the coronavirus over the past week in the state for a total of 10,826 since the start of the pandemic.
Juthani said in a recent interview that she expected COVID to spread as a result of BA.2.
“We know that numbers are going up,” she said. “Hospitalizations are going up, but not at a meteoric rise. They're still, relatively speaking, low but, having said that, we know unfortunately, we have an infectious variant that's out there.”