School buses bring students for vaccines
EAST HARTFORD — Katrinna Greene stood on the runway at Rentschler Field a few minutes after noon on Monday and shouted out, “Anybody need a vaccine?”
A couple of dozen high school students milled around, ambling toward the school buses parked nearby. No one answered Greene, an EMT now working as a vaccinator for Community Health Center Inc. at the Rentschler Field site.
They had all had their first shots of Pfizer doses as part of what Gov. Ned Lamont jokingly called “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Vaccination Incentive” — the latest scheme to move anti-COVID-19 serum into more Connecticut arms. By the end of the day, about 1,000 students from four Capital Region Education Council schools and East Hartford High School had arrived in buses and sat at tables on a breezy, sunny day for their inoculations.
Greene’s call-out pretty much summed up where Connecticut stands. Demand for vaccinations has slowed dramatically, with more than 1 million state
residents age 16 and over — all of them eligible — yet to see their first shots. That’s far from where the state needs to finish if anyone wants to even think about herd immunity.
As of Monday, Middletown-based Community
Health Center opened its four large-scale, outdoor vaccination sites in East Hartford, Stamford, Danbury and Middletown to drive-upos without appointments. Ditto its nine fixedsite clinics and of course, its mobile vans delivering juice
through needles wherever CHC can find a crowd.
“This is an important moment for Connecticut,” said Mark Masselli, founder and CEO of CHC, at the start of the school bus parade Monday. “We want to make it as easy as possible for anyone needing the vaccine to get it without any barriers.”
Fear was the main barrier for Nikela Walker, an East Hartford High School senior, who made an anguished face that might have won an Oscar Sunday night. “I’m scared of needles,” Walker said afterward, adding that it hurt “a little, but it stopped.”
Speaking of Hollywood, CHC even had a celebrity backdrop for photos. The Rentschler Field site, dubbed “Vaccine Village” when it opened over the winter, has done just under 2,200 shots a day in tyoically busy times, which might be waning.
“We’re really efficient here, we get ‘em in, we get ‘em out,” Greene said, explaining why no more students needed her services.
Some wrote on a white board that CHC staff had put out, marked “I Got My Shot Because ..... ” Answers included the sincere — “To be safe,” East Hartford High School senior Emmanuel Richardson wrote — and the snarky, as some wrote that their mothers made them do it.