Community Health Center, Inc., Connecticut’s largest health center serving more than 150,000 patients statewide, has announced a COVID-19 vaccine booster requirement for all employees. By February 1, 2022, all clinical and patient-facing staff must receive the booster; all other employees, including those working remotely, must receive a booster by March 1.
CHC previously instituted a requirement that all staff be fully vaccinated with two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. The booster requirement will apply to employees eligible to receive the dose per CDC guidelines.
According to Marwan Haddad, MD, chair of CHC’s COVID-19 Advisory Group, “At CHC, we have followed the science in our approach to protect our patients and staff during the COVID pandemic. The evidence is clear that people who are vaccinated and boosted are less likely to get COVID and less likely to be hospitalized than those who are unvaccinated and those who are vaccinated and not boosted. With this highly transmissible Omicron wave, we want to make sure that our staff is as fully protected as possible, which in turn protects our patients and communities.”