New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Maskless shopping where vaccines lag?
Expert: Good to lift mandate; challenge is implementation
The scene is about to change inside Connecticut stores this week when masks will no longer be required for those who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
While the state has been among the nation’s leaders for its high vaccination rate, some Connecticut communities are still lagging behind. And the latest state data shows only one person in a line of five people at a grocery store in some of Connecticut’s larger cities will be fully vaccinated.
With major retailers in these communities like Walmart, Costco and Trader Joe’s prepared to shed
their mask mandates on Wednesday, it remains unclear how or if businesses will monitor who is vaccinated and whether young children who are not eligible for the vaccine will be required to wear face coverings.
Dr. David Banach, head of infection prevention at UConn Health, said lifting mask mandates for those fully vaccinated
“is grounded in good scientific principal.”
“The challenge is the implementation ... ensuring that the guidance is followed, is gonna be challenging,” Banach said.
Unlike Israel, often touted by Gov. Ned Lamont as an early success story for COVID-19 vaccination, the U.S. has largely held off issuing vaccine passports that would allow people to prove they have been fully vaccinated.
New York has started a voluntary digital pass system that works through a phone app where users can show their vaccine or recent negative test status. But the Lamont administration has said it has no plans for an official vaccine passport system in Connecticut.
The lifting of the mask mandate on Wednesday coincides with the state’s plan to relax the remaining COVID restrictions. Lamont said fully vaccinated people should continue to wear a mask in certain crowded settings indoors. Business owners can also opt to still require masks, Lamont said.
Stew Leonard’s, the grocery retailer with stores in Norwalk, Danbury and Newington, as well as New York and New Jersey, is among the Connecticut businesses that plans to keep its mask requirement for now.
The grocery chain has posted a survey on Twitter, asking customers how they would feel if the company lifted its mask mandate. The poll has generated about 200 responses so far with 45 percent saying they are comfortable shopping without the mask mandate, while 29 percent said they are not comfortable and 23 percent said they are not ready to go maskless yet, but maybe in the “near future.”
A spokesperson for the state Department of Public Health said Friday there are plans to incorporate the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into Connecticut’s COVID guidance and orders.
“We anticipate that guidance and orders will be generally consistent with what the CDC released (Thursday), with a few local modifications that will be announced shortly,” said Maura Fitzgerald, the agency’s COVID-19 spokesperson. Under the CDC rules, fully vaccinated people will still need to wear a mask on public transit, health care settings and in other congregate areas, Fitzgerald said.
Fully vaccinated people now comprise around 45 percent of the state’s 3.6 million population, according to data released by the governor’s office last Thursday. People are considered fully vaccinated against COVID-19 two weeks after their second shot of either the Moderna or PfizerBioNTech vaccine, or two weeks after their shot of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
But that high vaccination rate is undercut by lagging immunization coverage in some of the state’s largest cities.
A review of town-by-town vaccination data updated each week shows that in Hartford, less than 26 percent of the city’s 122,000 residents are fully vaccinated. In Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city at 144,000, less than 27 percent of residents are fully vaccinated.
That means that in a line of five Bridgeport residents at a grocery store, there’s a good chance only one will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The data shows suburban towns surrounding the state’s major cities often have significantly higher vaccination rates. Simsbury, a town of about 25,000 northwest of Hartford, has almost 54 percent of residents fully vaccinated.
In Danbury, a little more than 34 percent of the city’s roughly 85,000 residents are fully vaccinated. In New Haven, the state’s second largest city at around 130,000 residents, only about 35 percent are vaccinated. In Torrington the number is just over 40 percent. In Norwalk, a little less than 42 percent are fully vaccinated. In Stamford, about 43 percent of residents are vaccinated.
Some communities are exceeding the state average for full vaccination.
Greenwich and Middletown each have nearly 47 percent of their residents fully vaccinated. At that rate, stores in those towns could see about two out of five people who would be fully vaccinated.
Connecticut’s Lower Connecticut River Valley region includes communities with the state’s highest vaccination rates. Lyme leads the state with nearly 65 percent of its residents fully vaccinated. Across the river, Old Saybrook and Essex each have more than 62 percent of their residents fully vaccinated.
In those towns, three out of five residents in a grocery store line would likely be vaccinated, the state’s data shows.
Some infectious disease experts pointed out that many people may also have some natural immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19.
“How that overlaps with vaccination, it’s hard to know, but probably the overall people who have seen COVID before have some degree of antibody responses,” said Dr. Luke Davis, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.
Davis said he’s concerned about the communities where vaccination rates are low.
“I kind of feel like COVID’s going to find it’s way,” he said. “It’s a respiratory virus, it’s transmitted quite easily under certain conditions ... I have a feeling it’s going to find it’s way eventually.”
Banach pointed out that many of the state’s underserved communities that now have lower vaccination rates have also seen higher rates of COVID cases throughout the pandemic.
Banach said people with compromised immune systems may not get the full protection from the vaccine. For those people, masking will likely remain important, he said. The CDC also recommends people with compromised immune systems continue to take protective measures.
The doctors said the goal going forward should be to focus on increasing vaccination in communities where there is a disparity.
“It’s not just a population-level immunity,” Davis said. “It’s immunity in all communities ... disease anywhere is disease everywhere.”