Deaths Fall; Vaccinations — & Hopes — Rise

Yale New Haven Hospital is vaccinating roughly 800 to 1,300 people per day at the Hillhouse High School-adjacent Floyd Little Athletic Center — as the regional hospital system continues to see vaccination rates go up and up, and Covid-related hospitalizations and deaths decline.

Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS) Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak gave those updated numbers Wednesday morning during the regional hospital system’s latest Covid-19 virtual press briefing, held online via Zoom and Facebook Live.

Balcezak and YNHHS CEO Marna Borgstrom said that the regional hospital system has fully vaccinated more than 100,000 individuals so far against Covid-19.

That includes the administration of more than 160,000 individual doses of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. While the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are two dose-treatments, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.

All Connecticut residents 55 years old and older are currently eligible to get vaccinated, according to the governor’s primarily age-based vaccine rollout plan. Other eligible Connecticut residents include teachers, childcare providers, healthcare workers, and emergency first responders.

Starting on Friday, any resident over the age of 45 will become eligible to sign up for a shot. And starting April 5, that eligibility list will broaden dramatically to include all state residents over the age of 16.

Balcezak said that the regional hospital system — which includes seven hospital campuses from Greenwich to Bridgeport to New Haven to Westerly, R.I. — is currently on track to administer roughly 12,000 vaccine doses per week. That weekly rate could double or triple in the near future, depending on vaccine supply received from the state and federal governments.

And when asked about the Hillhouse-adjacent mass vaccination site in particular, Balcezak said, ​“Right now, we’re limited merely by the allocation that we’re getting.

“We have 21 vaccination stations at Floyd Little, and we’ve never operated all 21. We could get up to a higher number” of vaccines administered per day ​“than we currently are.”

He said that site currently sees roughly 800 to 1,300 vaccine shots in arms per day. That’s roughly 3,000 to 4,000 shots at that mass vaccination site per week.

“We can increase that number maybe by 100 percent,” he said, depending on vaccine supply.

Yale New Haven Hospital volunteers nurses and doctors administered roughly 250 shots on the first day that local mass vaccination site was open in January. The city’s health director and top YNHH docs estimated at the time that the site could see roughly 1,400 shots administered per day.

“The good news is that the vaccine appears to be working,” added Borgstrom.

As of Wednesday, the hospital system has 165 Covid-positive inpatients, including 44 in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). That’s well less than half of the 477 Covid-positive inpatients across the regional health system on Dec. 8, at the ​“high water mark” for what Borgstrom called the ​“second wage” of Covid-19.

“We have seen inpatient admissions of patients over the age of 75 declining for the last four straight weeks,” Borgstrom added. YNHHS top spokesperson Vin Petrini said that, as a percentage of Covid-positive inpatients the hospital system treats, those over 75 decreases from 35 percent to 27 percent to 21 percent to 15 percent over a four-week period.

“There is reason for optimism … but we can’t let our guard down,” Borgstrom said.

Balcezak stressed the importance of continuing to maintain six-foot social distances, gathering outdoors rather than indoors when possible, and continuing to wear face masks, even as the governor opens up broader and broader swaths of the economy in the coming days and weeks.

“I really do think that complacency could be our enemy here,” he said. ​“We’re really, really close to the finish line in this marathon.” But we’re not there yet.

Balcezak said that the hospital system has cared for more than 11,000 Covid-positive patients since last March, and has discharged more than 9,800 out of the hospital and back to their homes. YNHHS has also had roughly 1,100 Covid-related deaths.

Watch Wednesday’s presser in full below.