YNHH photos
Dr. Onyema Ogbuagu receives his second dose from PACU RN Bonnie Landon.
Over 280 Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) medical providers have “completed their series” after receiving their second doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, as the regional hospital system rounded the corner on its first three weeks of its vaccination rollout.
YNHH Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak gave that update Wednesday afternoon during YNHH’s latest Covid-19 virtual press conference, which was held online via Zoom and Facebook Live.
Zoom
Balcezak (pictured) said that over 280 YNHH employees and associated medical providers have received their second doses of the two-dose vaccine treatment.
The regional hospital system — which includes Yale New Haven Hospital’s two city campuses as well as five other campuses across the state and in Rhode Island — received its first roughly 2,000 vaccine doses and formally began vaccinating its healthcare workers on Dec. 15.
Overall, Balcezak said, YNHH has given a first dose to roughly 16,500 of its “patient-facing employees and members of the medical staff,” and that thousands more should receive their second doses in the coming days after YNHH received another 6,000 vaccine doses from the state this week.
Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines — the only two that have received emergency use authorization from the federal government so far — confer an immunity of more than 94 percent to recipients who receive two doses separated by 21 days (for Pfizer) or 28 days (for Moderna).
YNHH Ed Nurse Mackenzie Kelley receives her second dose from YNHH PACU nurse Kari Cason.
Balcezak said that YNHH has “invited” all 33,000 medical staff, community physicians, and other healthcare providers associated with the hospital to get vaccinated. He said that over 17,000 so far have scheduled to receive (or, have already received) their first doses. He said the hospital hopes to schedule another 5,000 to 6,000 new vaccine recipients in the coming weeks, and to reach at least 80 percent of eligible healthcare providers in its system within the first eight to 10 weeks of the vaccination rollouts.
“It’s really encouraging to see the excitement, enthusiasm, and emotions running so high” among YNHH healthcare providers at the prospect of getting vaccinated, he said. “It really for us represents a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Nevertheless, he and Borgstrom said, community members should expect to keep up mask wearing, hand hygiene, and social distancing for the foreseeable future as more and more people get vaccinated so as to minimize spread of the novel coronavirus before community immunity is reached.
YNHH EVS associate Terry Naser receives his second dose from Landon.
That’s particularly important with the emergence of a new more infectious variant of the novel coronavirus, Balcezak said, which is not more lethal but appears to spread more easily.
“Combined with the vaccination campaign that we have and continuing our efforts around hand hygiene, masking, and distancing, we can avoid the unfettered spread of this new variant.”
The state remains in Phase 1A of the governor’s vaccination plan, which prioritizes vaccines for healthcare providers, first responders, and long-term care facility residents. Subsequent phases later this spring should open up vaccine eligibility to broader swaths of the community.
One Dose? Two Half-Doses? Mix & Match?
Balcezak was asked about the ongoing scientific debate about the most effective dosage schedule given the limited supply of vaccines. He responded said that YNHH — in following federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance — will be sticking with two-dose treatments separated by three or four weeks.
Great Britain is currently exploring mixing and matching vaccines from different manufacturers, or foregoing second doses to try to get as many first doses of the vaccine into as many individuals as possible, or maintain a two-dose treatment but to cut the size of each dose in half.
“All three of those things have not been scientifically studied,” he said. “They have not been part of any clinical trial. Anything being said about whether that’s an effective strategy or not is purely speculation or modeling. It has no basis in what we understand from clinical trials.”
332 In-Patients, Down From 440 In December
In other updates, Borgstrom said that the regional hospital system currently has roughly 332 Covid-positive inpatients. That’s down from 440 around a month ago, and well under half of the over 800 Covid-positive inpatients YNHH had during the first wave this spring.
She said that 160 of the 332 inpatients are in New Haven. And, systemwide, 76 are in intensive care units and 45 are on ventilators.
“There are still some very sick patients,” she said.
To date, YNHH has discharged more than 7,100 people who had been hospitalized with Covid back to their homes, and the hospital system has seen 858 Covid-related mortalities.
$121M Fiscal Year Operating Loss
When asked about how the recent $900 billion federal Covid-19 relief bill has affected or will affect YNHH finances, Borgstrom (pictured) replied that the hospital system closed out its last fiscal year on Sept. 30 2020 with what would have been a $400 million operating loss.
“We received federal stimulus money that allowed us to reduce that amount of $121 million,” she said. “But we did end the fiscal year with an operating loss.”
She said that YNHH received an additional roughly $123 million in December in subsequent federal relief. “That cannot be applied to previous years’ losses,” she said. “But we’re still suffering operating losses in the first couple months of this fiscal year.”
She said that that money received in December will hopefully be used to offset this fiscal year’s losses.