The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Area health districts try to meet needs
Robert Rubbo, director of health at Torrington Area Health District, has advised Litchfield County residents to “be patient” when it comes to getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
As of Monday, vaccination eligibility requirements expanded to people ages 55 and older, and to teachers, school workers and child care professionals.
Currently, the Torrington health district is administering 500 to 700 doses of vaccine a week.
“We are really at our limit,” Rubbo said. “We’ve been going 70 hours a week. We don’t have the capacity to administer all of
the vaccines that are available.”
The health district covers 18 municipalities, most within Litchfield County; and within those, there are 14 public school districts and 10 to 15 private schools.
Aside from administering vaccines, Rubbo said the health district has to “enforce all the sector rules.”
“We have to perform all the contact tracing and do all the case followups,” he said. “Then we have our regular jobs to do as well.”
Rubbo said the state “has very high expectations” when it comes to vaccine distribution.
“The state of Connecticut had put a goal out to do this next phase by the end of March,” Rubbo said. “It’s only March 1. I think that’s a very ambitious goal.”
Rubbo said the next sector for the state “is upward of 600,000 to 700,000 people. That’s not going to happen overnight.”
The health district has been “asked by the state of Connecticut to pause any new clinics for 55 to 65 plus,” he said. “We’ve been tasked to focus on the schools, and we’re talking somewhere upward of 5,000 to 8,000 individuals — just for our school systems.”
Additionally, there are “upward of 150 day care provider organizations, so that can be 1,000-plus, as additional individuals there as well,” he said.
Rubbo added, “If you do the math, it’s going to be very difficult to do this by the end of March. It’s all going to depend on how many partners we could bring on board . ... Please, please be patient. It’s just March 1.”
John Capobianco, vice president of operations at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, said due to the expected high demand for vaccines, the hospital has greatly extended the opening days of its clinic.
“We’ve been anticipating this, so starting this week we’re going from three days a week of having our Armory here in Torrington open for vaccination, to six days a week.”
Additionally, he said this week, they’re opening up a seventh day as a closed clinic for area teachers.
The hospital is opening up “convenient hours on weekends when teachers are not in school so we can vaccinate them, and they can still teach students since many of the school districts are going back to school in person,” he said.
The clinic, at the State Armory on South Main Street, is open from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
“As we get more vaccine, we open up more slots,” he said.
In terms of the number of vaccines, the hospital will be administering over 2,500 doses this week — about 1,300 first doses and 1,200 second doses, according to Capobianco.
He said, however, that the hospital is gearing up to deliver 3,600 doses a week.
“It’s really predicated on how much supply of a vaccine that we get for our area,” he said.
While the hospital has used the Moderna vaccine in the past, for the past six weeks it has been using Pfizer.
Next week, the hospital is expected to have the Johnson & Johnson vaccine available.
Capobiano said “by and large, there are a lot of very, very grateful individuals” coming through to the clinics, who have been very cooperative.
“The patients coming through and are just really hopeful for the vaccine,” he said. “Many on our staff have really, really enjoyed working in the clinics. It’s a sense of the future, for future hope and really the first time since COVID hit that we can look forward to getting through this and getting back to some form of normal.”