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YNHH top doc Thomas Balcezak: Vax, masking, testing will be part of our lives for at least another year.
Vaccines, masks, and testing.
Those three layers of protection will problem remain front and center of public life for at least another year, according to a top Yale doctor, as wave after wave of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to crash on the shores of a bygone, pre-pandemic “normal.”
Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) Chief Clinical Official Thomas Balcezak offered that assessment Thursday afternoon during the regional hospital system’s latest biweekly Covid-19 virtual press conference, which was held online via Zoom and Facebook Live.
Balcezak and YNHH CEO-to-be Chris O’Connor said that the regional hospital system — which consists of seven hospital campuses in Connecticut and Rhode Island, including two in New Haven — currently has 72 Covid-positive inpatients.
Thirty-two of those patients are in New Haven, 16 are in intensive care units (ICUs), and nine are on ventilators.
Balcezak said that roughly 90 percent of those hospitalized with Covid are unvaccinated. That has been and continues to be the case for some time, he said, given how effective the vaccines are at warding off severe illness during the pandemic.
“We are seeing a very stubborn set of numbers that are not going down in regard to inpatient cases,” Balcezak said on Thursday.
For the past few weeks, he said, YNHH has seen a steady Covid-positive inpatient census of between 50 to 70 people. He said that number will almost certainly increase in the weeks ahead as cold weather sends more people inside, and as people gather and travel for the holidays.
The most important protection that people can take, Balcezak said again and again, is to get vaccinated.
“What’s driving our hospitalizations are the unvaccinated,” he said. He noted that Connecticut has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country—with around 82 percent of the state’s total population having received at least one vaccine dose. He also noted how Connecticut has one of the lower rates of eligible people who have received Covid-19 booster shots.
Gov. Ned Lamont this week urged all vaccinated adults to get boosters. (Previously the booster shots were recommended for limited groups of adults.)
How concerned should we all be about rising cases? About that stubborn hospitalization number? About that share of the population that continues to refuse to get vaccinated?
Is it time to start seeking out some semblance of “normal,” as New York Times reporter/opinion writer David Leonhardt contended in a recent controversial morning newsletter?
Balcezak chuckled during Thursday’s presser when asked about that word “normal.” We’re still a far cry from whatever we thought of as “normal” back in the fall of 2019 before Covid made landfall, he said.
“I don’t think we’re getting back to where we were in 2019” any time soon, he said.
What does that mean for life now?
“I think we need to focus on masks, testing, and vaccinations as successive layers of protection,” Balcezak said. “If you can do two of those things, then I think you’re pretty well protected. If you do none of those things, then I think you’re exposed.”
That said, Balcezak continued, “you have two choices: Either get vaccinated, or you’re gonna have Covid. It’s just a matter of time.” While masking and regular testing are effective at stemming transmission, he said, by far the most effective tool for protecting oneself and others from getting Covid is getting vaccinated.
“There’s no time in the next foreseeable future, the next year at least, where we’re not going to have to consider those three layers of protection,” he said.