Thomas Breen photo
Health Director Maritza Bond shows off new mass vaccination site.
Vaccination stations set up in the fieldhouse’s corridor.
A new gym-turned-vaccination site co-run by the city and Yale New Haven Health is slated to open Monday at Hillhouse High School’s Floyd Little Fieldhouse — where nurses and medical volunteers will administer up to 1,400 shots each day, seven days a week.
On Friday morning, city Health Director Maritza Bond and Yale New Haven Hospital Vice President, Behavioral Health & Emergency Services Mark Sevilla gave a tour of the nascent public health site that is in the final stages of being set up at the 480 Sherman Pkwy. facility.
Scheduled for a “soft opening” on Monday for Phase 1b-eligible residents ages 75 and up, the Floyd Little Fieldhouse clinic — along with a new mass vaccination site that opened on Friday at Yale University’s Lanman Center on Ashmun Street — represents one of the biggest steps forward yet in local healthcare providers’ bids to bring Covid-19 vaccines to the New Haven public.
The Sherman Parkway entrance to the fieldhouse.
The site will have 22 stations — desks spaced six feet apart — in the corridor that runs from Sherman Parkway to the back parking lot near Crescent Street. One nurse per table will administer vaccines to people who have scheduled an appointment in advance.
The adjacent indoor track will not be used as a vaccination site, but rather as an overflow seating area for people waiting to get a shot.
At full capacity, the site will be open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (with initial hours closer to 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.), and will be able to provide shots to upwards of 1,400 people each day.
“I think it’s just so interesting to see how things can be transformed, how we can transform an athletic center into something that can provide care and access to protect the health of individuals,” Bond said about the new vaccination site.
“As we go through each of the phases, it’s really giving us hope that the more we vaccinate, the closer we can get to herd immunity. … It gives me hope that, in Connecticut, we are one of the five top states in the nation giving out vaccines. Which means that people are ready to get vaccinated. And so we want to be able to meet that demand.”
Connecticut is still in Phase 1b of the governor’s statewide vaccine rollout plan. So the Floyd Little Fieldhouse (also known as the Floyd Little Athletic Center) vaccination site will be open to start only for eligible Connecticut residents ages 75 and older.
Eligible seniors can schedule an appointment to get vaccinated through the state’s Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS), or by calling statewide Covid hotlines at 1 – 877-918‑2224 or 2 – 1‑1, or by calling the city Health Department at (203) 946‑6669. Sevilla said eligible patients will also be able to schedule an appointment at this site by using YNHH’s online scheduling form or by calling YNHH’s hotline at 1 – 833-ASK-YNHH (275‑9644).
1,400 x 7
“This is a good site because it’s centrally located, easily accessible, on a known street, and large,” Sevilla (pictured) said when ticking off the different attributes that make for a quality mass vaccination location.
In addition to the 22 nurses or other medically-trained volunteers who will be administering vaccine doses, he said, the site will also have around six people on site charged with preparing the vaccines, five working at registration tables, and four to six greeting people as they enter on Sherman Parkway, or via the handicap access through the back parking lot.
“We’re working to draw in as many people as we can,” Sevilla said about the hospital’s efforts to enlist volunteers — including retired nurses and doctors.
City police will provide security at the site 24/7, he said. And people who get shots at the site will almost certainly get vaccines made by Moderna, as that vaccine type can be refrigerated and does not need to be kept at the same freezing cold temperatures as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The Floyd Little Fieldhouse site, with a capacity of 1,400 shots per day, is the smallest of the three area mass vaccination sites run or co-run by YNHH. Both the Lanman Center site on Ashmun Street and a new site at Yale University’s West Campus will have roughly 40 vaccination stations each, meaning they’ll be able to see upwards of 2,400 patients per day.
Sevilla said one of the biggest challenges of setting up the Floyd Little site was making sure that patients, staff, and volunteers can practice “social distancing — being able to keep everyone apart.” Signs throughout the site will direct the flow of pedestrian traffic in the corridor. Signs outside of the site will direct drivers to a parking lot off of Munson Street adjacent to Sherman Parkway.
City Director of Public Health Nursing Jennifer Vazquez (pictured) noted that the Health Department is still vaccinating eligible residents at its 54 Meadow St. clinic.
In fact, on Saturday, the city Health Department will host a clinic for seniors 75 and over from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. People can schedule an appointment not by going through the VAMS system (which has earned the ire and frustration of many for how convoluted it can be) but rather by calling 203 – 946-5950 or 203 – 946-7026.
The city Health Department’s vaccine delivery from the state this week consisted of Pfizer-BioNTech doses, as opposed to the typical delivery of Moderna doses that the city has been receiving since it started vaccinating on Dec. 28. Because the city will now be receiving the Pfizer vaccine brand, Vazquez said, it is storing those doses at Yale New Haven Hospital’s freezer, and is looking into purchasing its own freezer.
She added that, as of Thursday, the city Health Department has vaccinated a total of 2,750 people.
About That Party …
Bond also spoke with the Independent on Friday about a recent report in the Connecticut Post that she briefly attended a birthday party in Trumbull for a former colleague of hers from when she worked for the City of Bridgeport.
That party ultimately turned into a 300-person birthday bash that is currently being investigated by the state’s attorney’s office.
Bond told the Independent that she drove to her friend’s house to drop off a gift at around 8 p.m. Saturday night. She said fewer than 10 people were there at the time. She never went inside the building, anyway, she said. She said she left within 15 minutes to respond to two Covid-related emergency calls in New Haven.
She said she was in bed by 10 p.m. — well before a midnight video was taken that showed hundreds of people partying indoors.
“I am deeply disappointed that people attended a largescale gathering that potentially put their health at risk,” she said. “Everyone knows I feel very strongly about advocating against these types of gatherings.”
When asked about a flurry of chatter and speculation on social media about Bond’s brief presence at that party, the city health director told the Independent that her mother had Covid, her grandmother had Covid, she herself gets tested every day, and she sees firsthand all the time the devastation wrought by the pandemic and the importance of following public health guidelines.
“I thought it was going to be an intimate small gathering,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with dropping off a gift. I was in an outdoor area. It was not ill intended.”
She repeated that she left the party well before a large crowd arrived: “I would have never, ever associated myself with that.”
"Eligible seniors can schedule an appointment to get vaccinated through the state's Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS), by calling statewide Covid hotlines at 1-877-918-2224 or 2-1-1, by calling the city Health Department at (203) 946-6669, by using YNHH's online scheduling form, or by calling YNHH's hotline at 1-833-ASK-YNHH (275-9644)."
This site is really convenient for me and I'm excited to have it open but I'm still confused. Can I register for my vaccination at Hillhouse by calling any of the numbers above? Or do I have to call a special number for the Hillhouse site?
[Tom: Thanks for the question! Any of those options should work. As we laid out in this article (https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/phase_1b_sites/), there are quite a few ways to schedule an appointment at vaccination sites across the city. Unfortunately, many of those ways require some slogging through online forms and calling support lines. I just checked the YNHH scheduling website, and I didn't see any appointments available to schedule at the Hillhouse site. That should change as the hospital updates its list of appointment availabilities. Please do post another comment if you are able to schedule an appointment through VAMS or one of the phone lines. Curious to hear readers' experiences about which route works best. As we noted here (https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/seniors_vaccinated/), scheduling has proven quite the pain for some local seniors.]