50K appointments on day 1
CT sees rush as eligibility expands to residents age 45 and older
About 50,000 first-dose COVID vaccine appointments were booked in Connecticut on Friday when those 45 and older became eligible, a state official said.
Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said the progress is a “great start.” Geballe said state officials are aware many newly eligible people were not able to schedule an appointment on Friday, but said more slots will soon be available.
Geballe said it was not immediately known how many of those appointments were for the newly eligible group of 45- to 54-year-olds.
“We’re confident everyone who became eligible (Friday) will be able to get an appointment in the next couple weeks,” he said.
Geballe said the only hiccup was one provider’s website running slowly, but he declined to say which one.
The state this week received 130,000 first doses of vaccine, which is expected to increase to about 150,000 next week. Geballe said the increased supply is from additional shots of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Geballe said there has been more demand for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because it requires only one shot. Geballe said demand appears to be balanced between the two-dose mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief medical officer for Yale New Haven Health, said his health network opened appointments at 6 a.m. Friday. Within 20 minutes, 5,000 users had populated the
online system and booked all of the available slots.
“It was a very fast pickup, and that was not dissimilar to what we’ve seen (with past age groups),” Balcezak said. “We’ll see this for the next couple of days.”
Balcezak said the health system continues to be restricted by the limited supply of vaccines it’s received. He said the network had been receiving about 6,000 doses per week. The amount surged to as much as 16,000 doses and Balcezak said the state said the network could expect to receive about 10,000 weekly doses.
We’re in the home stretch, he said.
“No one wants to trip at the end of the marathon … we are at the end of the marathon,” Balcezak said. “Let’s just stay strong.”
On Friday, when many of the state’s pandemic restrictions eased, 18 more COVID hospitalizations were reported, increasing the total to 402. The daily positivity rate stood at 2.87 percent, with 1,207 new infections reported out of 42,075 tests. Another 10 fatalities attributed to the illness brought the state’s death toll to 7,832.
Gov. Ned Lamont has urged caution as the restrictions are eased. While capacity limits have been lifted at gyms, restaurants and houses of worship, the state’s mask mandate and social distancing requirements remain in effect.
Lamont and other leaders gathered Friday at Aquila’s Nest Vinyards, a farm and winery in Newtown that opened during the pandemic.
“We’re reopening the state (Friday), the vaccine is the key to fully reopening our economy, and Connecticut’s been doing great on that but we need to keep our pedal to the metal here,” said David Lehman, commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development.