How And When Will The Coronavirus Vaccine Come To CT? – Patch.com

CONNECTICUT An initial shipment of about 2.9 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech hit the loading docks this weekend. President Donald Trump called the speedy development of the coronavirus vaccine a "medical miracle," and it's tough to argue.

Connecticut expects to receive its first vaccine doses on Monday for the Pfizer vaccine candidate. Connecticut's Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe said the state expects to receive just shy of 32,000 doses of the Pfizer elixir in the first round. The vaccine will require two doses spread weeks apart and a time period after the second dose for the vaccine to take effect.

The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at temperatures far below freezing and must be prepared for injection and given quickly once thawed, presenting even more logistical wrinkles for the rollout.

There are 204,000 health care workers, 22,000 nursing home residents and 6,000 medical first responders that fall into the state's first vaccine priority group. Those numbers assume 80 percent of people in those categories get the vaccine. Connecticut is prioritizing health care workers because they are at a higher exposure risk.

Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday that he thought it would take at least a month between when the vaccine was introduced into a community, and when actual results could be charted there.

One thing is certain: it'll be easier to get the vaccine into the arms of children. Licensed pharmacists are now cleared to administer any federally-approved coronavirus vaccines after Lamont signed an executive order this week. Pharmacists will also be allowed to administer flu vaccines to children between the ages of 10 and 17 years old.

The state is aiming for 70 to 80 percent of people to get the vaccine once there is enough supply. Mass distribution isn't set to happen until at least the beginning of the second quarter of next year.

And Connecticut residents will be rolling up their shirt sleeves, early and en masse for the vaccine, make no mistake. Or at least that's what Connecticut Patch readers told us in a survey last week:

The vaccine delivery timeline does nothing to quell the anxiety of the more than 14,000 educators and school community members who signed a petition urging Gov. Ned Lamont to enforce statewide school coronavirus protocols. The governor has repeatedly stated that the safest places to be during the pandemic were classrooms, due to their rigidly enforced cleaning and virus mitigation protocols. Leaders of education unions disputed that at a rally on the steps of the State Capitol Thursday.

Teachers are classified as critical workforce members under Connecticut's vaccine rollout plan, but that doesn't mean they'll be getting the first slice of the vaccine pie. They, along with first responders and some others, are tentatively scheduled to receive the vaccine sometime between mid-January to late May.

Additional safety protocols may be paramount on the minds of Connecticut educators, but many area businesses see more coronavirus restrictions contributing to an extinction level event. Many small businesses have already gone under, and many others were counting on a strong holiday trade that now appears to be fizzling.

Restaurant workers and sympathizers rallied last week after a Yale-affiliated doctor appeared with Lamont at a news conference Monday and urged him to shut down indoor dining rooms. Organizers, demanding another round of CARES-like government aid, have planned a protest at Lamont's residence this Monday.

Whether the state or Uncle Sam open their checkbooks soon and by how much is still anybody's guess, but Lamont continued to express great reluctance about imposing any further coronavirus restrictions upon restaurants. On the day Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced New York City restaurants would be closing their dining rooms two weeks before Christmas, Lamont reiterated his support for Nutmeggers eating out.

"If you close down restaurants, where do people go, they don't stop, you know, eating indoors, they just go to a different environment," Lamont said during a roundtable discussion Friday. Connecticut's indoor dining is currently limited to 50 percent capacity.

Businesses other than restaurants might be fair game, however. On Thursday the governor speculated about how future state coronavirus restrictions might look. He envisioned a more tailored approach, rather than just a brute force rollback to a previous reopening phase. Lamont hasn't released specific coronavirus metrics that would lead to tighter restrictions, but said they would be related to hospital capacity.

Coronavirus net hospitalizations declined for the second day in a row on Friday, with a drop of four patients down to 1,210. Earlier in the week, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services reported that Connecticut's intensive care unit resources are holding up better than those in most areas around the country.

Connecticut has moved to the middle of the pack for states in virus metrics. It has the 31st-highest rate of new coronavirus cases in the country and the 32nd-highest positive test rate. The state reported nearly 3,800 new coronavirus cases Friday and a 6.97 percent positive test rate. For now the state has settled around a 7 percent positive test rate, Lamont said.

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How And When Will The Coronavirus Vaccine Come To CT? - Patch.com