‘We’re still seeing demand’
Danbury ramps up vaccination efforts as other towns consider phasing out
DANBURY — As some towns start to consider winding down COVID-19 vaccine clinics, Danbury is adding new clinic locations and expanding outreach.
The Connecticut Institute for Communities, which has focused on vaccinating Danbury’s most socially vulnerable residents, opened a new, larger vaccine clinic Tuesday. The clinic will run five days a week during regular business hours.
The organization will move vaccination appointments from its Main Street headquarters to the new site down the street, where the provider will exclusively offer the Moderna vaccine, according to Katie Curran, chief operating officer and general counsel for the nonprofit known as CIFC. With the move, CIFC hopes to increase doses from about
160 doses a day to 300. The new 6,000-squarefoot clinic vaccinated just under 200 people Wednesday, 150 of which Curran estimated identified as Latino.
State data released Thursday afternoon shows that Danbury remains an outlier among its surrounding towns, with just 37.6 percent of its adult population having had at least one shot, compared to other towns’ rates of nearly 50 percent and above. Bethel is the city’s closest competition, with little more than 47 percent receiving at least one dose.
One element behind the lag is Danbury’s large population compared to other areas, Curran said. But the other part of the equation includes equity issues.
Danbury was one of 50 ZIP codes that the state identified as a priority for vaccine distribution due to its high social vulnerability index.
“It does give us the opportunity to do more volume,” Curran said of the new clinic. “But we think more important than that is giving us the opportunity to really focus on equity and outreach.”
Two weeks ago, the organization began running twoto three-day Johnson & Johnson vaccination clinics at its community center, which was a drive-thru testing site.
“We had people arriving for [the Johnson & Johnson vaccine] when the pause happened [Tuesday], and we immediately shifted to Moderna,” Curran wrote in an email Wednesday.
CIFC’s clinics still have waiting lists, but Curran said when demand slows, its work will continue.
“We’re still seeing demand but when we get to the point where then it’s a supply-vs.-demand issue, that’s when the outreach part becomes even more important,” she said.
New Milford and Brookfield are continuing their inoculation efforts. Both towns have been listed as virus “hot spots” by the governor, and officials have emphasized the urgency of getting vaccinated.
Brookfield just moved operations to a larger clinic, which they opened last week, and New Milford foresees continuing its clinics through May. After that, New Milford Health Director Lisa Morrissey anticipates waves of need resurfacing as more groups, such as younger children, become eligible for vaccination.
“Every time that they say that there’s a new eligible group or a booster available, we’re going to see an influx of people who are looking to get vaccinated, but in between we’re going to see lows because we’ve vaccinated so many people,” Morrissey said during Monday’s Town Council meeting.
She said althought a significant demand for appointments exists, it’s much easier to find one now than it was four weeks ago.
In Ridgefield, Director of Health Ed Briggs said the town is continuing clinics, but may eventually discontinue them. The town has given at least one shot to over 60 percent of its nearly 25,000 residents, but the health department is not seeing the kind of decline in vaccination registrations that would signal the need to stop, and it still has “some home bound people to catch up on,” he said.
“After this week we’ll evaluate it,” Briggs said. “As long as we have people showing up, we’ll continue.
If that starts to taper off, then we’ll rethink it because there are quite a few sites around offering it now.”
In other towns, slowing demand has officials reevaluating plans.
Redding and New Fairfield have announced their clinics will close in the coming weeks due to widened vaccine availability and dwindling demand.
The Redding clinic will distribute the last of its first doses on April 23 but will continue having seconddose clinics, with the last one set for May 21. New Fairfield similarly plans to stop distribution for first doses in mid-April, with hopes of phasing out clinics by mid-May.
This news comes as the state anticipates vaccine supplies will soon outweigh demand.
In an interview earlier this week, New Fairfield First Selectman Khris Hall said the availability of vaccines has increased so much that when they reach out to people on their standby list, it turns out they’ve been vaccinated elsewhere.
Redding Health Officer Doug Hartline has found the same happening in his town.
“As it becomes more and more available through pharmacies, Big Y, all these other outlets, we have found that it’s not necessary to continue the clinic distribution,” he said.
“It’s good news that we are sensing the supply of vaccine is starting to catch up with the demand,” he added, noting the vaccine is becoming “easier” to find.