CT Looks To Next Coronavirus Vaccine Phase As New Strain Spreads

CONNECTICUT — It was a week when you could almost feel the state had the coronavirus on the run — if you were white.

Hospitalizations plummeted, the positivity rate flattened, and the vaccine became more readily available — in retail pharmacies, no less. But on Wednesday the state released new data that sure must have killed the buzz in Hartford. For the first time, the Department of Public Health distributed the vaccine administration information broken down along race and ethnic lines, and the picture it painted was not pretty.

Less than four percent of the vaccine made available to Connecticut from the Feds found its way into Black arms, and only about 5 percent of the stash was administered to Hispanics, according to the new data. Meanwhile, over 56 percent of the available medicine had been given to the white population.

The disparity became even more pronounced in the data for the highly COVID-fragile 75-and-over crowd:

The state has long known that Black and Hispanic lives were more in danger from the virus — not for biological reasons, but for economic ones.

Along with the release of the numbers, Acting Public Health Commissioner Dr. Deidre Gifford promised her crew would be "redoubling ... efforts to ensure that vaccine is reaching the communities and populations who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19."

Vaccines... Everywhere

Part of that redoubled effort will take the form of ensuring some of the new retail access points for the vaccine are situated in communities with a high social vulnerability index. That's the metric developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine which communities may need support before, during, or after disasters.

Statewide, the first vaccine dispensaries located within retail pharmacies Walmart, CVS and Walgreens opened last week. All locations require appointments and there are no walk-in coronavirus vaccine immunizations offered. Stamford Health, Yale New Haven Health and Hartford HealthCare are also offering vaccinations for eligible people through their own appointment systems. Connecticut offers a website where people can find the closest of the more than 120 locations to their zip code.

The appointment parsing is necessary, Gov. Ned Lamont said, because the federal government is still only able to provide the states with a "very limited supply" of the vaccine.

Separately, the federal government is partnering with pharmacies across the country to distribute vaccines. Around 11,000 weekly vaccine doses will be available, but those are part of, and not in addition to, the state's allocated supply.

As of last Thursday, residents between the ages of 65 and 74 years old were able to sign up for an appointment to receive the vaccine. Residents 75 and over, frontline health care workers and members of certain congregate settings are already eligible for the vaccine. There are around 350,000 Connecticut residents between 65 and 74, and it will take about four weeks to vaccinate that age group, according to Lamont.

Just as the week of mostly good coronavirus news was ending came word from the DPH that 22 additional cases of the B.1.1.7 coronavirus strain — the so-called "U.K. variant" — had been identified in Connecticut. That brought the statewide total cases of the variant to 42.

The state had vaccinated 10.7 percent of its population as of Thursday, and 58.3 percent of those aged 75 and over. That's a good start by anyone's reckoning, but the specter of the much more contagious strain getting its knobby mitts on residents faster than the state could inoculate them is a chilling one.