With 5 Shots, City Starts Vaccinating

Bond joined Mayor Justin Elicker and a dozen fellow city department heads, emergency responders, public health workers and local doctors Monday afternoon for an outdoor vaccination event held in front of the city Health Department’s headquarters at 54 Meadow St.

That’s where the health department, as of Monday, has begun administering doses of the Moderna vaccine to eligible healthcare workers and emergency responders who fall within the state’s Phase 1A category of vaccine recipients.

In the shadow of the nine-story office building, Bond, city Fire Chief John Alston, local pediatrician and Board of Education member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, local pediatric dentist and Board of Public Health Commissioner Darnell Young, and city Director of Public Health Nursing Jennifer Vazquez took turns sitting in high chairs beneath a tent set up on the sidewalk.

With their sleeves rolled to their shoulders, the local healthcare workers received shots in the arms from city nurses Kara DelVecchio, Kelly Stewart, and Grace Grajales.

“I’m so elated to be here and to be part of this historic moment,” said Bond, who since assuming office at the start of year has led the city’s public health response to the pandemic.

Less than a year after Covid-19 made landfall in the city, she said, vaccines are now available — and frontline health care and public health workers like herself can further protect the public from the novel coronavirus by modeling their trust in the safety and efficacy of these new vaccines.

Bond said that the city Health Department vaccine clinic will be open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, and that city nurses had administered the vaccines to the first dozen healthcare worker recipients earlier on Monday.

Monday’s vaccination presser comes five days after the city received its first batch of 1,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, and less than two weeks after Yale New Haven Hospital began its own vaccination campaign with nearly 2,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Elicker stressed that both vaccines are more than 94 percent effective at preventing recipients from getting sick with Covid-19, and at lessening symptoms for those who do contract the virus.

Both require two-dose treatments: with the Moderna vaccine doses administered 28 days apart, and the Pfizer vaccine doses 21 days apart.

Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said that, as of Dec. 23, 16,487 people statewide have been vaccinated, including roughly one-third of the state’s 22,000 nursing home residents.

“This vaccine is safe. Both the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines are very safe,” she said. ​“And they’re extremely effective. It is 94 percent effective. That is a great thing.”

City Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal agreed. ​“Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations save lives,” he said.

Now that safe and effective vaccines are becoming available to more and more of the general public, he said, public health officials must educate and encourage as many people as possible to get vaccinated.

“Safe And Effective” Message Targeted At Minority Communities

All five New Haveners to be vaccinated at Monday’s press conference are African American or Hispanic, and nearly everyone who spoke sought to dispel myths and fears about the vaccine by stressing their confidence in the science behind it.

“There’s a large issue of not trusting certain treatments or vaccines based on our history in this country,” Alston (pictured) said, specifically addressing concerns among African Americans about the safety of the vaccine.

“I want to affirm that the research that’s been done on this vaccine, the testing that’s been done, the best minds that we have, the best scientists that we have, the best production systems that we have, have all been brought to bear to provide us this day with the best possible tools to fight this. The only way it works is that we get vaccinated.”

Young (pictured) described the Covid-19 vaccine as a representation of scientific progress, as a ​“light at the end of the tunnel” for this pandemic.

People of color may have doubts, he said. ​“But you have to remember in the formulation of these vaccines, and in the trials, people of color we part of that as well. Our minds were also part of formulating this.”

Jackson-McArthur (pictured) described herself a ​“daughter of this city”: as someone who grew up in Fair Haven, has practiced medicine in New Haven for 22 years, is married to a police officer, and has two brothers who are police officers.

“We are leading by example,” she said. ​“We need our people to become vaccinated. As a Black woman, I know how much hesitation and doubt there is about this vaccine. We are witnessing some of the most brilliant minds that have come together to bring this science to us so that we have a punch back when we’re out at work dodging the virus.”

Eligible Phase 1A health care workers and emergency responders interested in getting vaccinated by the city can register here. Click here for more information from the city about the vaccine. And click on the video below to watch Monday’s presser in full.