New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Aiming to ‘vaccinate many more people’
As eligibility expands, towns prepare, New Haven seeks to hire public health nurses
NEW HAVEN — Despite concerns about capacity and supply, health authorities in Greater New Haven say they are prepared for the logistical challenges that will unfold Monday following a recent statewide change in vaccination eligibility,
An estimated 600,000 more people — those between the ages of 55 and 64 as well as and school and child care workers — will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine Monday.
“We think there’s going to be a run on the bank and the scale is going to be very high,” said Ohm Deshpande, Yale New
Haven Hospital’s executive director of clinical operations and physician lead for vaccination enterprise. “We’ve seen this with every other phase we’ve gone through in general.”
Across Greater New Haven, officials say they are operating clinics, with expansions to new sites in some areas, while not always knowing what vaccines supplies will be.
Unlike other authorities, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said the city does have staffing concerns. He said nurses were given Feb. 27 off from working within vaccination clinics because they are “totally overwhelmed” and the city is actively seeking to hire more public health nurses to assist with vaccinations and to serve as school nurses.
“The New Haven Health Department is just one of many entities providing vaccines, and our hope is that as the supply increases and the number of different health care providers increases, we’ll be able to vaccinate many more people,” he said.
Elicker said the city health department will continue its mass vaccination program, including weekly pop-up clinics on Wednesdays.
To vaccinate school staff and child care workers, who become eligible as a group on Monday, the city plans on using schoolbased health clinics and other schools as vaccination clinics.
For bus drivers, who are hired by a transportation contractor, the city is providing an additional site for vaccinations.
Deshpande said the hospital system is not limited by concerns around space or staffing. He said the system is prepared to meet the need with its eight sites and staff of vaccinators, but they do not have a large enough supply of the vaccine.
“There simply isn’t enough vaccine coming into the state on a weekly basis to meet the demand,” he said.
Deshpande estimated the hospital system currently is operating at about one-third or onefourth of its overall capacity. He said it’s possible for some sites to have 15 to 20 vaccinators working
at one time if they were to have a larger supply.
The upside to the lack of supply, Deshpande said, is that doses are not going to waste.
“Vaccines are not sitting on the shelf,” he said. “We’re utilizing above 90 percent of everything we get. They’re going into arms.”
The East Shore District Health Department, which has been coordinating vaccination clinics for East Haven, Branford and North Branford as well as Guilford and Madison, will continue to operate vaccination clinics at senior centers in each of the five towns, in addition to running clinics for teachers and other education employees, said Director Michael Pascucilla.
In addition to those, it plans to vaccinate 250 education employees in each town this week, using a dedicated vaccination clinic at Branford High School. The health district has joined forces with Connecticut Hospice, Fair Haven Community Health Care in New Haven and Community Health Center of Middletown to try to handle the increasing numbers of eligible people, he said.
Pascucilla said CVS “also is coming online in this area,” which should help with vaccinations. But ultimately, “everything is going to depend on the number of doses we get,” he said.
In order to increase capacity, Fair Haven Community Health Care on Wednesday will move its vaccination clinic to the vacant Wilbur Cross High School in
New Haven.
FHCHC and Cornell Scott Hill-Health Center each plan to offer vaccines for school staff through their respective schoolbased health centers, according to the city.
Rose Pudlin, director of practice transformation at FHCHC, said the clinic receives about 400 first doses each week and soon will be eligible for an additional amount through the Health Resources and Services Administration, making FHCHC one of four clinical sites in Connecticut selected for the program.
Clinic officials did not yet know how many additional doses they will receive through HRSA.
Like New Haven, Wallingford health officials are creating a separate vaccination clinic for its school workers, said Wallingford Health Director Stephen Civitelli.
He said his department hopes to finish vaccinating people 65 and older “in the coming weeks.”
In Hamden, the vaccination efforts are assisted by the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center.
“Like other municipalities across the state, we are working tirelessly to find ways to support and protect our residents through the pandemic. We are proud of the strides we are making on behalf of our communities in collaboration with the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center,” Hamden Mayor Curt Leng said in an email.
Max Reiss, a spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont, said, “We acknowledge there might be a bottleneck.”
According to the state, 887,325 doses of the vaccine have been administered as of Thursday — 304,539 of which were second doses. Seventy-three percent of the population over 75 years old and 44 percent of the population between 65 and 74 have been vaccinated, the state reported.
The state has increased its efforts to assist local vaccinators, as well, Reiss said. According to United Way of Connecticut, the staff answering phones for the 7-1-1 line to assist with vaccination appointments has been doubled to include 300 employees.
But officials said not everyone should expect to be able to roll up a sleeve right away.
In addition to newly-eligible residents, there still are people eligible under prior phases — such as people over age 65 — awaiting their first dose of the vaccine.
“Those phases don’t end, they roll into each other,” Reiss said. “The process we’re starting on Monday that’s age-based is going to work and lead to a more expeditious timeline to get vaccines in arms, but we still need people to be patient.”
The state Friday expected to receive 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines from the federal government weekly, a number that could increase by 30,000 as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine received emergency use approval Saturday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.