Yale New Haven Health seeks more vaccine
System receives half of request from state
NEW HAVEN — While more than 16,500 of Yale New Haven Health’s frontline workers have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the health care system is receiving only half the amount of vaccine requested, officials said Wednesday.
Otherwise, “where we are right now is relatively positive and hopeful for us,” CEO Marna Borgstrom said during an online news conference because so far the second wave of the pandemic does not appear to be spiking as high as in the spring, she said.
Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief clinical officer for Yale New Haven, gave credit “to our communities who are helping us flatten that curve.” Unlike the first surge in March and April, “this wave has got a smaller total number and is spread out in a flatter way, indicating that in fact the efforts to slow the spread of the virus are working,” he said.
Borgstrom said there were 440 COVID-19 patients in the system’s five hospitals a month ago, but on Wednesday that number was 332, with 76 in intensive care and 45 of those on ventilators. Yale New Haven Hospital had
160 inpatients, while there were 87 at Bridgeport Hospital, 36 at Greenwich Hospital, 40 at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London and nine at Westerly Hospital in Rhode Island.
Yale New Haven has requested 10,000 doses of vaccine each week, according to spokesman Vincent Petrini.
Balcezak said the state allocates about half of that order and, while the first shipments were the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine, the health system is receiving the Moderna vaccine now.
He said Yale New Haven received 6,000 does this week, but “we’d like to see more like 10,000 to 12,000 total doses.”
On Tuesday, the first 280 employees who received the Pfizer vaccine received their second dose, 21 days later. The Moderna vaccine requires a second dose 28 days after the first.
“We’ve sent invitations to more than 33,000 individuals,” Balcezak said. “We’ve scheduled more than half of those folks to receive their first vaccine. … It’s really encouraging to see the excitement, the enthusiasm and the emotions that have run so high among our employees and medical staff when they’re getting this vaccine. It really represents for us a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Balcezak said about
1,000 staff members per day have received vaccinations, and “our goal is to use up all of our doses right up to the moment that we receive our next allocation.”
He said some employees have not responded to the invitation to get their shots, but said, “I don’t think we’ve seen significant resistance. I think there are pockets of individuals that are waiting to see how others do with regard to getting the vaccine.”
Balcezak said staff have been surveyed to determine their reasons for not scheduling themselves, “and we’re debunking those reasons.” They include fears that the vaccine could affect fertility or that it is not safe, neither of which is true.
“A lot of that initial concern is starting to break down and we’re getting to a tipping point,” he said.
The new variant of the virus that has appeared as close as New York state “is thought to be more infectious, not any more lethal, but given its infectivity and its increased infectiousness, it represents a risk for us because, as you increase the infectiousness of a virus you can increase its spread and create a logarithmic growth in the number of cases that you may see.”
He said hospitals in Connecticut have been working together with the state Department of Public Health and “unlike the rest of the country, I think you’ve seen in Connecticut, we have been vaccinating using all of our supply as soon as we get it.”
Balcezak said the health system’s scheduling system has prevented vaccine doses from going unused. “One of the logistical challenges of both Moderna and Pfizer is that they both require special handling,” he said. Neither can be kept in a syringe for more than six hours. There are
10 doses of vaccine in each vial, he said, and at the end of the day, if there are doses left, an on-call list is used to find people to give the vaccine to.
Balcezak labeled as “speculation or modeling” theories of how to administer the vaccine in different ways than have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration: using two different vaccines on the same patient, forgoing the second dose in order to vaccinate more people or cutting each dose in half.
“All three of those things have not been scientifically studied. They have not been part of any clinical trial,” Balcezak said. He said the FDA has stated they will not approve any variation in how the vaccines are given.
Borgstrom said the health system, which ended its fiscal year Sept. 30 with a $121 million loss, down from $430 million because of federal assistance, has received an additional $123 million in December but is still operating at a loss.
Balcezak said the health system is testing 4,000 employees per day, and “we have a goal to get to
10,000,” but that the ability to increase the number of tests is limited by supplies. However, he said, “we are seeing less exposure to our employees and less testing demand on our employees.”