Do you need to get both vaccine doses at same place?
‘Person of interest’ in New Haven slaying
Anthony Santella was trying to help his father schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments, but he says he was twice denied at one facility.
Santella, who lives on Long Island, had easily scheduled his father, an 81-year-old Norwalk resident, for his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine at the Norwalk Community Health Center. But he was unable to get an appointment for his father to get the second dose there.
He tried to find his dad a second appointment, through the state’s Vaccine Administration Management System website, and by calling around, including to Stamford Hospital.
“After an hour on hold, I was told that I can’t schedule a second dose if he hadn’t had the first there,” Santella said, adding he called a week later and was told the same thing.
Stamford Hospital spokeswoman Andrea Jodko said she was surprised to hear that anyone had been turned away for their second dose since “that isn’t our policy.”
She said people are encouraged to schedule both shots at the hospital, but staff should not reject anyone who didn’t receive the first dose with Stamford Health.
“In line with guidance from the state, we recommend that individuals receive their first and second doses from the same facility; however, we do not require it,” Jodko said in an email.
Santella said he eventually scheduled his father’s second dose appointment at the Norwalk Senior Center.
But now he’s trying to schedule an appointment for his mother, and he’s worried he might encounter the same problems getting a second appointment.
Several other Connecticut hospitals and health facilities said they “encourage” people to get both shots at the same location, but it isn’t mandatory. They also maintain that no one should get turned away for a second dose at a location just because they didn’t receive their first dose there.
“We are not ‘requiring’ it, but we are encouraging individuals to get their first and second dose at the same clinic for tracking and supply purposes,” said Amy Forni, a spokeswoman at Nuvance Health — which includes Danbury, New Milford, Norwalk and Sharon hospitals. “However, we are not turning anyone away if they scheduled an appointment for a second dose at one of our clinics, but got their first dose elsewhere.”
State Department of Public Health spokeswoman Maura Fitzgerald said there’s a reason that providers prefer people to get both shots at the same location.
“Currently, the second dose inventory is sent to the provider location that administered the first dose, so it makes things logistically simpler for people to get their second dose where they got their first dose,” Fitzgerald said.
Another benefit of getting both shots at the same location is that providers can be sure that patients are receiving both doses of the same vaccine, said Dr. Zane Saul, chief of infectious disease at Bridgeport Hospital.
He said patients whose first dose was of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should not receive the Moderna vaccine as a second dose, and vice versa.
“The whole idea is you want to get the same vaccine, optimally at the same place,” Saul said. “But we understand that scheduling has been a nightmare and there are a lot of variables. People run out of vaccine, and I know the weather has been a factor (in scheduling).”
But if people do get their second shot at a different location than their first, Saul said they need to bring their vaccine card to ensure they are getting the correct dose.
In many cases, people want to get both shots at the same location whenever possible, said Andrea Boissevain, director of health at the Stratford Health Department. “It’s often close to home, they are familiar with the set up, ecettera.” she said.
Whenever possible, Boissevain said, Stratford’s staff tries to schedule people for their second appointment before they leave the clinic when they receive the first dose. Yet, she pointed out that people don’t have to get both doses at the clinic.
“We don’t require it — we just require that they get the same vaccine,” she said.
NEW HAVEN — Qinxuan Pan, named a person of interest in the killing of a Yale graduate student, allegedly stole an SUV, changed his cellphone number and dropped out of contact with his family ahead of the incident, according to a police report.
The Attleboro District Courthouse in Massachusetts released the report, written by Mansfield, Mass., police to secure a warrant for Pan’s arrest.
In the report, Officer Joshua Ellender said a salesman at a local dealership had reported a car stolen at around 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6, the day Kevin Jiang was killed.
According to the report, the salesman “explained that Qinxuan Pan walked in today and wanted to test drive” a blue GMC Terrain SUV and bring it to his mechanic for inspection before potentially buying it. Pan left with the vehicle around 11 a.m., according to the report.
The salesman asked Pan around 5:30 p.m. when he would be returning the vehicle. Pan initially asked for more time, saying he had a family emergency, then stopped responding to texts and calls after being told he needed to return the car by closing time at the dealership.
Ellender asked Malden police to check whether the vehicle was at Pan’s residence in that community.
Pan’s mother reportedly told Malden police that Pan had “changed his cell phone number and wouldn’t tell them where he was,” but that he would return the vehicle.
A call from Hearst Connecticut
Media to a number for Pan’s home in Malden Friday was unsuccessful, as the line had been disconnected.
The salesman also vouched for Pan, saying he believed he wasn’t stealing the car, as he seemed like a squared-away individual.
Ellender thus “delayed entering the vehicle as stolen and gave Qinxuan a chance to contact me or to return the vehicle,” he said in the report.
At 10:30 p.m., he checked on the matter; Pan had not returned the SUV. He entered the vehicle as stolen at 10:40 p.m., he said in the report.
He was then notified at 10:45 p.m. that North Haven police had reported “they had just towed the vehicle,” as Pan had gotten it stuck on railroad tracks while driving it in a scrap yard in Connecticut.
Pan allegedly had attached a commercial Connecticut license plate to the vehicle, replacing the dealer plate, according to the report.
In asking for the warrant, Ellender noted that Pan was believed to be potentially involved in “a serious criminal case” in New Haven, had concealed the vehicle’s identity, and “fled to another state” before New Haven police arrived to question him.
A nationwide manhunt has since ensued for Pan, considered a person of interest in Jiang’s death, with a $10,000 reward.
He reportedly last was seen in Georgia, according to the U.S. Marshals Office for Connecticut, and could be staying in the Duluth or Brookhaven areas of that state.
U.S. Marshal Matthew Duffy on Friday said there had been no developments in the search.
Jiang’s body was found around 8:30 p.m. Feb. 6 on Lawrence Street near its intersection with Nash Street, according to New Haven police.
Pan reportedly checked into the Best Western Hotel on Washington Avenue in North Haven around 10:30 p.m., roughly two hours after Jiang was killed.
Jiang was engaged to be married to Zion Perry; his fellow students and members of Trinity Baptist Church, where he volunteered, are raising funds to support his family.
Perry attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the same time as Pan, who is a graduate student there. Photos of the two of them interacting have been posted online; Perry has not returned requests for comment regarding them.
Police believe Pan was “in the area” at the time Jiang was killed, New Haven Police Chief Otoniel Reyes has said.
The department considers Pan a person of interest; at this time, he is not officially suspected of committing the shooting.
New Haven police previously said that anyone who knows of Pan’s whereabouts should use “extreme caution” and is asked to call the department at 203-946-6304.
ALBANY, N.Y. — At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, two Democratic governors on opposite ends of the country were hailed as heroes for their leadership in a crisis. Now they’re leaders on the ropes.
Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California are embroiled in distinct political woes. For Cuomo, it’s a federal investigation into whether his administration sought to hide the true toll of the pandemic. For Newsom, it’s fending off a recall effort fueled by opposition to his lockdowns — and his own personal missteps.
But for both men the bottom line is clear: If you’re not careful, the same crisis that can raise your stock can just as easily bring you down.
“We’ve had too many mission accomplished moments,” said Rebecca Katz, a New York City-based Democratic strategist who ran a primary challenge against Cuomo in 2018, in a reference to former President George W. Bush’s premature boast days after the conquest of Iraq.
The COVID-19 virus has been an especially painful illustration of that point. The virus is now stretching into its second year, a timeline few could have comprehended when schools and workplaces were first shuttered last March and governors who control lockdowns played newly prominent roles in Americans’ lives.
Cuomo and Newsom both seized the moment in their own ways. Cuomo went on television for daily briefings that were paternal, almost philosophical, and also sharply critical of the Trump administration. They became must-see TV across the country, aided in part by his CNN news host brother. Newsom, meanwhile, instituted early lockdowns, and for a time his state avoided the worst of the virus. He was a smoother, reassuring presence. He studiously avoided partisanship, even landing himself in an ad for President Donald Trump.
But ultimately it was their actions, not their tone or words, that brought them down to earth.
“This is all a bunch of tough stuff,“said California strategist Rob Stutzman, noting that governors are judged on outcomes and the outcomes in this crisis have been bad everywhere. “At the end of the day, these different approaches the governors have taken have made very little difference because, well, it’s a virus.“
Several governors have managed to avoid major political backlash, like Republican Charlie Baker in Massachusetts or Democrat Jared Polis in Colorado. But the travails of Cuomo and Newsom show how big states are exceptionally tricky to run and always under the microscope — something also demonstrated this week in Texas, as the nation’s second-largest state suffered extended power outages during a deep freeze that sparked criticism of its Republican governor, Greg Abbott.
“New York and California are under a magnifying glass,” said Jared Leopold, former spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. “Everything good that happens there looks five times better and everything bad looks five times worse.”
While the coronavirus may have first landed on U.S. soil on the West Coast, it exploded into public consciousness in March as New York City was wracked by a hideous outbreak. As the epidemic spiraled, Cuomo on March 25 issued a directive barring nursing homes from refusing patients based solely on a COVID-19 diagnosis. Cuomo defended the directive as an effort to prevent catastrophic hospital overcrowding and discrimination against virus patients.
Despite his state’s death toll — more than 46,000 people in New York state have died of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University — Cuomo’s popularity soared, and some Democrats in the spring and summer favorably contrasted his response with Trump’s bravado and false optimism, wondering if Cuomo could replace Joe Biden on their ticket or sign on as a vice presidential candidate. In October, Cuomo took an early victory lap, releasing a book titled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
But the nursing home issue exploded onto the political scene with two recent revelations. First, the state’s Democratic attorney general chastised the Cuomo administration for minimizing the death toll at nursing homes by excluding certain fatalities from the count. Cuomo’s administration then revealed at least 15,000 people living in long-term care facilities have died of COVID-19, nearly double the number Cuomo had initially disclosed.
The New York Post reported that a member of Cuomo’s administration told lawmakers it had withheld the numbers for fear of them being “used against us.” A furious Cuomo at a press conference accused Ron Kim, a Democratic state legislator who spoke to the Post, of corruption.
Kim said Cuomo had called him and threatened to “destroy” him.
“The nursing homes story really exposed quite a bit about questions about his leadership style and the success of his leadership during COVID,” said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University. “The governor wrote a book touting his accomplishments, and we don’t know if we’re halfway out of the pandemic.”
The meltdown in California has been more gradual. A month after Cuomo released his coronavirus book, an embarrassed Newsom was apologizing for attending a lobbyist’s birthday party at the posh French Laundry restaurant, even as he was telling Californians to avoid gatherings.
The restaurant scandal came as California’s image as a model of COVID response began to fade. Rising cases and shrinking capacity at hospitals prompted Newsom to reinstate stay-at-home orders between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Republicans had circulated recall petitions against Newsom months before, complaining about his handling of homelessness and the economy, but they shifted to include his COVID-19 response in their complaints and began racking up signatures.
In January, Newsom abruptly lifted the stay-athome orders, sparking accusations he was abandoning science. He was then forced to retool the state’s vaccine distribution system. Now the state’s coronavirus numbers are dropping. His job approval rating has also.
Stutzman said Newsom is suffering for failing to provide the smooth, efficient government he promised when elected. But part of his fall, and Cuomo’s, was inevitable because they are no longer being compared to Trump and his often handsoff approach to the virus response.
“Any of these Democratic governors are going to come off these initial highs they got that were better than Republican governors,” Stutzman, a Republican, argued. “Democrats across the country got a false boost out of this because of Trump, but when it all nets out it looks the same.”
The governors’ troubles stand as a warning for Biden, a Democrat who has declared he now owns the pandemic response and will be judged by how he delivers.
“At least the Biden administration got to see how everyone else did first,” Katz said.