New vaccine challenge: Surplus doses
After months of straining to meet demand, state is now grappling with excess supply
Just a few weeks ago, Parker Memorial Community Center in Hartford’s North End was packed each day with locals seeking vaccination against COVID-19. But on a recent afternoon, the building’s spacious lobby sat largely empty, as patients arrived in a slow trickle, often outnumbered by the staff waiting to vaccinate them.
Of several dozen vaccine-seekers who came through the doors over several hours, the vast majority were there for their second vaccine doses — the back end of a rush that began when vaccine eligibility expanded on April 1.
With few people currently seeking a first dose, traffic is likely to slow even further in the coming weeks.
“We’ve seen a little of a drop-off,” said Sara Leslie, a nursing professional development specialist at Trinity Health of New England, which runs the Parker Memorial clinic. “A lot more second doses now. We’re not doing quite as many first doses.”
After more than four months during which Connecticut had too many vaccine-seekers and not enough supply, that dynamic has flipped. With more than 70% of Connecticut adults at least partially vaccinated, the state now has plenty of vaccine doses — but not enough people who want them. During the first week of May, Connecticut providers reported administering about 67,000 first doses, down from 170,000 the first week of April.
This trend has forced officials in Connecticut and elsewhere to get creative. New York City has offered
Shake Shack gift cards to anyone who gets vaccinated at one of the city’s mobile clinics. Ohio has entered all vaccinated residents into a lottery for a chance to win $1 million. In Connecticut, people who get vaccinated can receive baseball tickets, hot dogs and free drinks.
As Connecticut sits significantly shy of the herd immunity threshold that might end its COVID-19
outbreak for good, the state needs more people vaccinated, but finding them won’t necessarily be easy. Here is what might come next.
Vaccine seekers will continue trickling into clinics:
Though an overwhelming majority of patients at the Parker Memorial Community Center clinic were there for their second doses, a few had arrived looking for a first dose.
Dorel Simpson, 58, said she hadn’t been able to get vaccinated when she first became eligible because she was sick with shingles but had come to the clinic once she was well enough. Taneka Brown, 43, said she’d been initially reluctant to get vaccinated but had eventually come around.
“At first I was skeptical about it but now I’m not so much because a lot of people I know had it, and they’re OK,” Brown said.
The next day, a vaccine site in Torrington brought a similar scene: plenty of empty seats, a trickle of patients — mostly young people who had become eligible only a few weeks earlier but also a few older residents who had delayed for one reason or another. Several said they’d merely waited for their schedules to free up.
“When I had time, I did it,” said Atif Kahrimanovic, a Torrington native at the clinic for his second shot.
Officials say the people most anxious to be vaccinated have already come and gone from vaccine sites. From here on, these clinics will serve those like Simpson, Brown and Kahrimanovic who didn’t rush to sign up but got around to it eventually.
Larger vaccine sites may begin to close:
To this point, large vaccine sites such as the Connecticut Convention Center and Rentschler Field have been essential to Connecticut’s vaccine rollout. And although there is no indication currently that those will close imminently, many sites will soon be scaled down or shuttered.
In Torrington, for example, the large vaccine clinic at the armory will soon be replaced with several smaller, more targeted sites.
Meanwhile, a Hartford HealthCare spokesperson said that mega vaccine sites at the Xfinity Center in Hartford and at Oakdale Theater in Wallingford will close May 23. At Saint Francis Hospital, chief medical officer Dr. Phil Roland said Friday that officials were “considering the long-term future” of the hospital’s on-campus clinic.
“There’s clearly a demand for the citizens of our community to be vaccinated, but to meet that we have to be in their neighborhoods.”Dr. Phil Roland, chief medical officer at Saint Francis Hospital
“There’s no question that we’re seeing less and less volume at many of our sites, and in order to be able to concentrate that and make it useful, we’re reevaluating the large mega-sites and whether they’re useful,” Dr. Jim Cardon, Hartford HealthCare’s chief clinical integration officer, said Thursday.
Many large sites have begun accepting walk-in patients, which officials say has helped increase traffic somewhat. Additionally, vaccine clinics could soon see a bump in traffic as vaccination begins for young people age 12-to-15.
Cardon said there is currently no plan to shut down other large sites, such as the Connecticut Convention Center.
“We’ve got to run out the second doses here for a bit,” he said.
Proactive outreach will become more important:
With fewer people showing up at large vaccine clinics, outreach has become increasingly vital.
“We’re on the downside of people who are on the internet scheduling vaccine and traveling long distances like we saw earlier in the year,” Roland said. “There’s clearly a demand for the citizens of our community to be vaccinated, but to meet that we have to be in their neighborhoods.”
Across the state, hospital systems have leaned increasingly on mobile clinics that visit a given location for a few hours at a time, while local health departments have called residents and even gone door to door asking if they’d like to be vaccinated. Providers have also begun offering vaccination for homebound residents who can’t get to a clinic. The state has dispatched several dozen yellow vaccine vans to sites across Connecticut, inviting organizations to request them through an online form.
Officials hope these methods together will allow providers to slowly chip away at the population of people who remain unvaccinated.
“Maybe it’s not six days and 600 doses but maybe one day a week and 100 doses,” said John Capobianco, vice president for operations at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. “And we’ll continue that until we see that the need is no longer there.”
Incentives may be coming:
Gov. Ned Lamont has repeatedly raised the idea of incentivizing vaccination.
Already, the state has partnered with the Connecticut Restaurant Association to provide free drinks at participating restaurants, from May 19-31, for anyone who has been fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, Hartford HealthCare and the Hartford Yard Goats are offering free tickets, as well as a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, for anyone who gets vaccinated at one of the team’s upcoming games.
More incentives could be on the way.
“I prefer incentives. I prefer encouraging people to get vaccinated,” Lamont said Monday. “Things may be trailing off for younger people. We may need to think of other ways to [incentivize] them to get vaccinated.”
Herd immunity remains a while off, but every shot counts:
As of Thursday, about 71% of Connecticut adults and 58% of residents overall had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose.
Though those figures rank Connecticut ahead of most other states, they leave the state short of the threshold necessary for herd immunity, which experts estimate occurs when between 70 and 85% of a total population is immune.
Dr. David Banach, an epidemiologist at UConn Health, said that while the slowdown in vaccine demand may complicate the process of reaching herd immunity, the recent decrease in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Connecticut show that vaccination works and that every shot makes a difference.
“The goal all along, and the goal that remains, is to help provide as much immunity as possible through vaccination,” he said. “What’s clear is that vaccinations and immunity drive down transmission, and I think that’s the main message.”