Hospitalizations tick up, positivity down

Share of population fully vaccinated rises to 24%

As Connecticut races toward a measure of herd immunity, COVID-19 metrics were mixed Wednesday, with hospitalizations ticking up but the rolling average positivity rate trending down.

Connecticut reported 1,038 new

COVID-19 cases out of 27,019 tests administered, for a 3.84% daily test positivity rate Wednesday, a decline from Tuesday’s rate of 5%. The rolling seven-day positivity rate has remained steady at 3.8% so far this week.

There are currently 514 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, an increase of nine individuals since Tuesday. After dipping below 500 hospitalizations last week, the state surpassed that number again Tuesday.

Five Connecticut residents died of COVID-19 Wednesday, for a statewide total of 7,935 deaths since the pandemic began last year. There have been 558,956 deaths nationwide due to COVID19, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center reported Wednesday evening.

Simultaneously, COVID-19 vaccinations continue steadily across the state. As of Wednesday, 39% of Connecticut residents had received at least one dose of the

COVID-19 vaccine and 24% were fully vaccinated, according to data from the New York Times.

Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said Monday that 60% of all Connecticut residents will have likely received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of April. Out of the population of residents 16 and older currently eligible for the vaccine, Geballe predicted that “we could be close to three quarters of the entire population with their first dose by the end of the month.”

The rate of full vaccination — a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or a second dose of the PfizerorModernavaccines— would likely trail the first dose rate by 10 percentage points, Geballe added.

“We’re going to be getting some very high numbers of the percentage of the total Connecticut population vaccinated by the end of the month,” he said.

With each additional COVID-19 vaccine administered, Connecticut takes a step closer to herd immunity, the level at which outbreaks are prevented because a large proportion of residents is immune to the virus. Dr. Pedro Mendes, a computational biologist at UConn Health, and other experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top infectious disease expert, say that roughly 70% to 85% of residents will have to be fully vaccinated in order to reach that threshold.

Last month, Mendes estimated that Connecticut could reach a herd immunity of about 80% by August. Now, given the accelerated pace of Connecticut’s vaccination rate, the state could theoretically reach that level as early as July, he said Wednesday. But there is a significant caveat.

“This is likely not going to happen for one reason: the rate of vaccination that we’re doing is great, but at a point, they’ll have to chase demand...this rate will probably slow down,” he said.

Gov. Ned Lamont has said he expects supply of the vaccine will begin begin to outpace demand for shots in late April.

When that shift occurs, the race to vaccinate residents will become “much more of a grassroots, ground-game kind of operation,” with “moreandmore teams out in neighborhoods making it really convenient,” Dr. Jim Cardon, chief clinical integration officer at Hartford HealthCare, said.

“To date, we see mostly an access problem, not a hesitancy program. As we move through this we might start to bump into some hesitancy,” he added.

Mendes noted that his “optimistic” Julyestimatefor herd immunity also does not take into account that residents younger than 16 years old are not currently eligible for the vaccine. But teenagers and some younger groups of children may be able to start getting vaccinated by late summer, hesaid, making his original August estimate for herd immunity potentially more likely.

Even so, if 80% herd immunity is not quite achieved this summer, beginning to approach that threshold would mean significant strides in the effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, he said.

“Once you start getting closer to herd immunity, someone infected already has more difficulty in finding susceptible people, if that person encounters a lot of people who have been vaccinated. Particularly if westill have maskmandates, then that becomes even higher,” he said.