Vaccine doses plentiful in CT as demand slows By Julia Bergman
The long awaited moment in Connecticut’s vaccine rollout has arrived.
At a COVID-19 vaccine clinic in New Canaan Wednesday, only 200 of the 600 doses on hand were used.
At the four mass vaccination sites run by Community Health Center Inc. in Danbury, Stamford, Middletown and East Hartford, only 72 percent of slots were taken as of Thursday afternoon — down from a nearly instant, total demand until recently.
When there were leftover doses at a recent vaccine clinic at a downtown Middletown restaurant, acting health director Kevin Elak went door-to-door to businesses looking for arms to inject.
These are all signs that Connecticut now has more doses than people willing
to roll up their sleeves. The people heading vaccination programs say there’s not any one driver behind the lag in demand and the slowdow is not concentrated in any one place.
The turnaround that state officials predicted weeks ago — when it was hard to imagine as so many people clamored for a vaccine — has happened on schedule, with 60 percent of Connecticut residents 16 and older having received at least one shot.
“Supply is more than demand in many places,” Gov. Ned Lamont said at his coronavirus briefing Thursday. “You can often go right online and get an appointment. We’re finding that many of our mobile vaccination vans that are out there, maybe they can do 140 doses in a day, maybe they’re doing 15 doses in a day.”
Half of all Connecticut residents, including children, have at least one dose toward a vaccination. That’s a milestone, for sure, but also a sign that the real work is just beginning as the rush on appointments slows, and as the state pulls out more stops to reach those who have yet to be vaccinated.
The number of people 16 and older who the state has yet to reach with any dose of the vaccine stood at 1,166,258 on Thursday — most of whom would need the inoculations for the state to reach so-called herd immunity. It was unclear how many of those have signed up for appointments.
“Our focus going forward has to be more outbound: the mobile units, the door-to-door campaigns, bringing the vaccine directly to people, breaking down any remaining barriers, questions, concerns they have to get those vaccination rates up as high as possible in the coming weeks,” said Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer.
The state has relied on mobile vaccine vans, which don’t require appointments, and trusted members of the community going door-to-door, to convince hardto-reach populations — chiefly urban Black and Hispanic residents — and those who are reluctant to get vaccinated.
But the state is now turning to a different approach, with the help of private industry.
Chris DiPentima, president and CEO of Connecticut Business & Industry Association, the state’s largest business group, said member companies are offering incentives to their employees such as gift cards, bonuses, and paid time off if they get vaccinated.
One company is planning to host a paid lunch for employees if it reaches an 80 percent vaccination rate across its workforce, DiPentima said. If it reaches 100 percent, the company will give all employees a day off from work.
Many providers say they are shifting their strategy from large vaccination sites where people have to sign up for an appointment to more walk-up opportunities to meet people where they are. Middletown is working with housing complexes to set up vaccine clinics in their parking lots or lobbies, for example, said Elak, the city’s acting health director .
“We’re trying to make it as barrier free as possible,” he said.
The United States as a whole has seen the average daily number of shots decline by 11 percent in the last week, The Washington Post reported Thursday, and many places are declining their full federal allocations of doses. Some Connecticut providers have reduced their requests to the state but the state has not turned away any federal allotments, Lamont and Geballe said, as outreach efforts intensify.
The reduced requests from providers means the state is able to allot doses to companies such as submarine builder Electric Boat, which requested supply to use at a vaccine clinic its hosting for its employees next week.
“Most weeks up until this point were significantly oversubscribed in terms of requests coming in from providers versus what we were able to fulfill,” Geballe said, “so that’s giving us the ability to now fully fulfill every request out there.”
Data released by the state Thursday showed that about 40 percent of people age 35 and under have received vaccines after three weeks of eligibility — well under that for the youngest of them — and that those groups saw smaller increases in the last seven days than older groups had seen in their third weeks of eligibility. That’s a sign that age is a factor in the slowdown.
Dave Roche, president of the Connecticut State Building and Construction Trades Council and general vice president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, said he’d work with the state to offer vaccine clinics at union meetings, union halls, training centers, and job sites.
To sweeten the deal, Roche, a self-proclaimed grill master, told the governor, he’ll bring the hamburgers and hot dogs.
To be clear, the state is still vaccinating large numbers of residents, more than 40,000 people on Wednesday alone.
“There’s a little more slack in the system, no question about it this week compared to last week, but I’d like to think we still have pretty good momentum,” Lamont said.
Still, while the state isn’t planning to lower its request for vaccine doses from the federal government, some providers are feeling the slack.
“There’s no question. The numbers are off,” said Mark Masselli, founder and CEO at Community Health Center Inc., which is based in Middletown and administers vaccines at the four mass vaccination sites, four mobile units and several of its clinics around the state.
While CHC is still administering about 8,000 shots a day, people are not snatching up appointments as quickly. “We’re getting to that point where we’re running into some hesitancy,” Masselli said. “This is a natural curve.”
Masselli said some of the slackened demand is that we’re down to people who are not opposed to the vaccine, nor fearful, but for them it’s not a priority. They’ve been following the news, saw that slots were unavailable so they waited. Now they see that slots are available and their attitude is, “Let me just figure out my schedule.”
Jennifer Vazquez, director of special programs and advocacy at Fair Haven Health in New Haven, said people now have many more options for where they can get vaccinated. The easing of restrictions has led some to feel a “false sense of security,” she said, and less of an urgency to get vaccinated.
“As we see more business, schools, etc., opening up as restrictions ease, the importance of getting vaccinated is getting pushed to back burner,” she said.