How Fair Haven Swung Back Into Action On Covid Tests

Contributed Photo

Maritza Casanova Spell picks up a test kit for a friend with Covid symptoms, during grassroots Fair Haven distribution.

At Fair Haven’s health hub, the Covid-19 test positivity rate neared 45 percent. Hundreds of people needing tests were turned away.

Suzanne Lagarde knew she needed help. And she knew where to turn: the community.

Lagarde runs Fair Haven Community Health Care (FHCHC), the main provider of health services on the east side of town and a nationally recognized community health center celebrating its 50th year in business.

By last week, amid the surge of the Omicron variant, the center was able to administer tests to 250 to 300 people a day at its Grand Avenue facility, Lagarde said. Then they ran out, leaving hundreds of other people in the cold.

The center was working hard to find at-home rapid tests to distribute as a supplement; the state wasn’t proving much help.

Meanwhile, Omicron was spreading fast, with 44.7 percent of the administered tests coming back positive.

Last Wednesday, Lagarde met with organizers from Fair Haven community groups who had led the way last spring when vaccination rates were low in Fair Haven. Back then (a decade or two in pandemic years), the groups (organized by Fair Haveners Kica Matos, Sarah Miller, and Karen DuBois-Walton), borrowed from the strategy of grassroots political campaigns to divide Fair Haven into quadrants, then send volunteers to knock on every door to provide information, set appointments and offer rides for people to get shots at FHCHC. Dubbed Vaccinate Fair Haven,” the campaign drew in groups like Unidad Latina en Accion, the Semilla Collective, legal aid, Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), Junta for Progressive Action, the Haven Free Clinic.

And it worked: Before the campaign, the people from Fairfield County and the shoreline were coming for shots while people two blocks away were not getting vaccinated,” Lagarde recalled during an appearance Tuesday on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven” program. The Vaccinate New Haven campaign hit every door in Fair Haven within six weeks. And vaccination rates picked up in Fair Haven, with a majority of people getting shots on Grand Avenue now people of color, Lagarde said.

Now the campaign was needed again. At the meeting last week, community leaders agreed to be ready to hit the streets whenever at-home tests arrived.

The tests arrive.

The next day, Thursday, a shipment did arrive at 2 p.m.: 2,700 at-home rapid tests arrived at FHCHC, courtesy of the Health Resources and Services Administration. A holiday weekend was starting; the Vaccinate Fair Haven coalition swung into action anyway, and delivered all the tests by weekend’s end.

It’s only 2,700 tests. It doesn’t meet all of the needs,” Lagarde noted. But it was a start. More tests are expected this week.

Count on FHCHC and its neighbors to be on the case.

We will continue to be there for this community,” Lagarde said. This is who we are.”

Click on the video to watch the full interview with Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven.”


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