⏩ Bethel ready to administer vaccine to eligible residents.
BETHEL — The town plans to open a clinic for the coronavirus vaccine to eligible residents by the end of the month, even as challenges to distribution remain across the state and country.
But Bethel police, volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians started getting vaccinated through Danbury Hospital this week, First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker said.
“The response is very good,” he said. “The acceptance rate is very high.”
Thirty of the 39 sworn police officers have signed up, while about 50 percent of volunteer firefighters and EMTs have registered, he said. He is not sure how many have actually gotten the first dose so far.
“Those shots just started this week, so I’m pretty sure those numbers will both rise,” Knickerbocker said.
These are higher rates than similar departments in the state, said U.S. Sen Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who visited the municipal center Tuesday afternoon to discuss the challenges of vaccine distribution.
“They’re ready here in Bethel,” Murphy said.
Bethel is partnering with Redding on distribution, while its close proximity to Danbury Hospital will help with the volume of vaccines, he said. In addition to the town’s clinic, residents are expected to be able to get the vaccine at locations like pharmacies, he said.
This partnership with Redding is expected to help the towns share
costs, Knickerbocker said.
Bethel plans to soon order refrigeration equipment to store the vaccine, he said. Knickerbocker did not know the cost of that, but anticipates that the town would be reimbursed by the federal government.
The latest federal coronavirus relief provided $ 8 billion for vaccine distribution, a number based on the estimated cost from state and local public health directors, Murphy said.
“The expectation is that any expenses that local governments are undertaking to distribute the vaccine should be covered by that number,” he said.
The town has not received any doses and does not yet know how many it will get, Knickerbocker said.
Officials are working through the “complicated” authorization process to set up a clinic in the municipal center gym, he said. He expects it to be open by the end of January.
“We won’t really know what the inbound vaccines are until that is fully permitted and up and running,” he said.
Vaccine providers are given little information about delivery, while not enough doses are being produced, Murphy said.
“Right now vaccine providers in Connecticut find out on Friday how much vaccine they’re going to get on Monday,” he said. “You can’t run a system that way.”
It’s a problem he said the incoming Biden administration will need to fix, he said.
“It’s not a nightmare today because we’re only vaccinating front line health care workers and first responders,” Murphy said. “But in a few weeks we’re going to be vaccinating the public and we need to have better certainty, better longrange planning on vaccine numbers.”
Connecticut has done better than other states, distributing the vaccine to more than 2 percent of its population. The first dose has gone to at least 75,180 people, with health care workers beginning to receive their second dose on Monday.
“But we still are not operating at an optimal level even in Connecticut,” Murphy said. “We have a ways to go to maximize efficiency of delivery, even in our state.”