Originally posted at Fairfield Citizen
Demand for COVID vaccines is flagging in Connecticut, so providers are shifting strategies toward smaller, community-based sites in an effort to get as many people vaccinated as possible, they said.
“What we’re not seeing is overwhelming demand,” said Ohm Deshpande, vice president for population health and a physician leader for Yale-New Haven Health’s vaccination program. “Demand is softening, there is no question about it.”
Several weeks after vaccines have opened to everyone age 16 and older, the slack in demand follows estimates by state officials. But still there are many people without the vaccine.
Deshpande said there are hesitancy concerns, people who for various reasons are reluctant to get vaccinated, but there are also some access issues as well.
“Access is part of it,” he said. “People who were really excited to get it have gotten it.”
But the situation has changed. Taking time off from work to get vaccinated has been too much of a challenge for some Connecticut residents.
“There’s still a population that says, “I’ll get it if it’s easy,’” Despande said.
As a result of that “slacking in demand,” Deshpande said Yale has been “making operational changes to keep the volume going.”
Yale isn’t the only provider changing strategy to compensate for a lower demand. For example, no appointments are necessary at a growing number of sites.
Community Health Center founder Mark Masselli announced Monday that no appointments would be necessary at any of CHC’s vaccination locations, including mass sites in Danbury, East Hartford, Middletown and Stamford.
“This is an important moment for Connecticut,” Masselli said in a statement. “We want to make it as easy as possible for anyone needing the vaccine to get it without any barriers. Just walk-in or drive-in to any CHC site and we will vaccinate you without delay.”
Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday there were 50 locations in 26 cities across the state that were accepting walk-up vaccinations.
James Cardon, chief clinical integration officer at Hartford HealthCare, said his organization is moving away from mass vaccination sites.
“We’re looking at how do we pivot from the mass vaccination sites into more local, easier-to-get-to sites that are more distributed,” he said.
This shift was not unexpected, Cardon said. Mass vaccination sites made sense when it was difficult to make an appointment.
“Appointments wouldn’t stay open on our site for more than a few minutes,” he said. “It was eventually going to move toward a more ground-level, community engagement process.”
Though mass vaccination sites “still play a role,” Cardon said that shift in strategy “probably means we don’t need them any more.”
The goal, he said, is to “turn this into a sustainable, scalable model, not an event.”
“We don’t need mass vaccination sites for the flu,” Cardon said.
There are also people who do not have issues with access. The now-lifted pause in administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “didn’t really help” assuaging vaccine hesitancy, Deshpande said.
Some residents feel less comfortable using the newly designed mRNA technology on which both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built, according to Deshpande, “People who don’t want a brand new technology.”
“We all, as a society, are going to have to do a lot more to address those individuals that are not being vaccinated,” Deshpande said.
Cardon said Hartford HealthCare and other vaccine providers in the state will have increase education efforts.
“The most we can do is continue to make it easier and simpler and communicate the benefit to yourself and to your family, your neighbors and your colleagues,” he said.