Covid Updates: Boosters Arrive; Hospitalizations Plummet

Booster shots are here for some — and coming soon for many more — according to Yale New Haven Health’s (YNHH) latest breakdown of who’s eligible to get their next doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, where they can go to get that jab, and why that extra shot is important.

YNHH Associate Chief Clinical Officer Ohm Deshpande offered that booster explainer Wednesday morning during the regional hospital system’s most recent pandemic-focused press conference. The presser took place online via Zoom and Facebook Live.

Given the flurry of recent national updates about booster shots, Deshpande was asked—what exactly does it all mean? Who is eligible, who’s not? Where can eligible recipients get their shots? And why do boosters matter?

Deshpande took a breath, and then a stab at untangling the latest national guidance around boosters. He said:

• First, it’s important to differentiate between boosters and third doses. The latter are for immunocompromised people who did not generate adequate levels of antibodies in response to a typical two-dose treatment of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines. The federal government has already approved third shots for those people with weakened immune systems. The feds advise those people to get their third shot 28 days after receiving their second shot.

• A booster shot, meanwhile, is design to re-up antibody levels that may have started to wane six months after people who are not immunocompromised received their last doses of the vaccine. Deshpande said that the federal government so far has approved boosters only for recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. If you are over 65 years old, if you are immunocompromised, and/or if you work in a job that puts you at a higher risk of severe Covid-19—and if it’s been six months since you got your last dose of the Pfizer vaccine—then you are eligible to get a booster shot of the Pfizer vaccine.

• That limit of boosters to Pfizer vaccine recipients only could change, Deshpande said, as early as later Wednesday. “We expect that at the end of today, here will be boosters approved for both Moderna and J&J,” he said. That’s because the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to sign off on allowing Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by Wednesday evening.

• That’s not the only booster-related change that could take place Wednesday, Deshpande said. The FDA is also expected to announce today that “mixing and matching” vaccines is permitted. Namely, someone who received a one-dose J&J vaccine more than six months ago will be permitted to get a booster shot of one of the mRNA vaccines—Pfizer or Moderna—if the FDA follows through on its expected guidance. “We are really waiting for that before we change any operations at present,” Deshpande said about the expected mixing-and-matching allowance. Deshpande referenced a recent National Institutes of Health study that found that J&J recipients who received a Moderna booster saw their antibody levels rise 76-fold in 15 days, compared to just a fourfold increase after an extra shot of J&J.

• Deshpande said that YNHH, which includes seven hospital campuses across Connecticut and Rhode Island, is currently providing booster shots to eligible members of the general public at its Scranton building at Orchard Street and George Street. YNHH is encouraging interested booster recipients to schedule a vaccination appointment in advance by going online here.

• Deshpande also said that the regional hospital system has administered around 5,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine booster so far. And he said that “only about 20 percent” of YNHH employees who are eligible for a Pfizer vaccine booster have gotten that next shot so far. That’s because of a dearth of demand, not supply, he said. “While there are folks [who are] very excited to get boosters, their response is not nearly the same as what we saw in the beginning of the year.”

Covid Hospitalizations Drop To 51 Systemwide

Also on Wednesday morning, YNHH CEO Marna Borgstrom said that the regional hospital system has only 51 in-patients with Covid systemwide. Twenty four of those patients are in the intensive care unit (ICU), 18 are on ventilators, and 29 are in New Haven.

“I think everything’s trending in the right direction,” Borgstrom said, referring to how the number of YNHH patients hospitalized with Covid has decreased significantly in recent weeks.

Deshpande and YNHH top spokesperson Vin Petrini also suggested that the number of people hospitalized with Covid is also a much higher number than patients currently hospitalized because of Covid.

“It’s usually a sizable fraction of people who come in asymptomatic” and are coming to the hospital for an unrelated medical procedure and then test positive for Covid upon arrival, Deshpande said.

“It’s been a very low percentage of people coming in because of Covid,” Petrini agreed. He said that recently that number has been as low as 10 percent — that is, 10 percent of people currently in the hospital with Covid are there because of Covid, while the vast majority of other Covid-positive in-patients are hospitalized for another reason.

8 More Employees Get Vaxx’d ​“At The Last Minute”

Deshpande also stressed during the press conference just how successful YNHH’s employee vaccination mandate has been.

On Monday, of the regional hospital system’s 28,000 employees, only 94 were slated to be fired because they refused to get vaccinated and did not qualify for a religious or medical exemption.

In the past day, Deshpande said, of those 94 who had been suspended and were on track to be fire, eight of them got vaccinated ​“at the last minute,” and so will not be fired.

As of Wednesday morning, 49 employees have been fired for not getting vaccinated, and 37 more are in the process of getting fired — though they too could still save their jobs by getting a jab.

“These numbers are fluid,” Deshpande said. And ​“this remains a really good story.”

Before YNHH implemented its vaccination mandate, only 81 percent of employees were vaccinated. ​“That 19 percent was really a tough nut to crack, and we didn’t know how it would end.” He said he and his colleagues estimated that between 100 and 200 employees would ultimately get fired for not complying. That estimate wound up being quite a bit higher than the reality.

And, Deshpande said, if those who do get fired for not being vaccinated changes their minds and get the shot, ​“we are more than happy to have them back.”