YNHH Covid Cases Plummet To 58

Covid cases continue to drop precipitously, as Yale New Haven Health has only 58 patients hospitalized with the novel coronavirus in all seven locations in Connecticut and Rhode Island — down from an Omicron-wave high of 767.

Top YNHH doctors and administrators gave that update Tuesday afternoon during the regional hospital system’s latest regular Covid-19 update.

YNHH’s seven hospital campuses across Connecticut and Rhode Island include the York Street and St. Raphael hospitals in New Haven. (The giant healthcare nonprofit is also on the brink of acquiring three additional hospitals in Waterbury, Manchester, and Rockville from the California-based Prospect Medical Holdings.)

YNHH CEO Marna Borgstrom said Tuesday that the regional health system’s seven hospital campuses currently have 58 in-patients hospitalized with Covid. That includes 33 in New Haven, 17 in Bridgeport, two in Greenwich, and six in New London.

That’s down from 767 Covid-positive in-patients systemwide during the second week of January, at the height of the Omicron-variant-induced wave of new cases and hospitalizations.

It also coincides with continued weekly analysis of few Haven’s wastewater showing the precipitous decline of local cases since the Omicron peak.

“That’s a pretty remarkable turnaround,” Borgstrom said, ​“and, unlike with previous variants, this one had a pretty meteoric rise and also fell quite precipitously.

“We’re not complaining about that. I think that’s good news for all of us.”

In his most recent statewide Covid update on Monday evening, meanwhile, Gov. Ned Lamont said that the state’s daily test positivity rate was 2.82 percent.

While the number of Covid in-patients and the case positivity rate continues to decline, YNHH Chief Medical Officer Thomas Balcezak said Tuesday, ​“It’s still not zero. I think we will have small numbers of patients, thankfully, in our health system for some period of time as we continue to give other services to our communities.”

Asked for his thoughts on whether or not we will need fourth shots or another round of Covid-19 vaccine boosters anytime soon, Balcezak said that the latest research into Covid-19 vaccines shows that immunity lasts ​“probably six months to a year.”

He guessed that the federal government will likely recommend another round of Covid-19 booster shots ​“later this summer or early this fall, depending on what the studies of long-standing immunity show, and frankly what the case rate is.”

“We’re probably going to get into a cycle where Covid becomes cyclical,” he continued, ​“and we’ll likely have to get some sort of a regular, perhaps annual booster [shot], like we do for the flu.”

See more above for the latest Covid-focused wastewater analysis, as provided by Yale Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering Jordan Peccia.

$1M In Medical Supplies To Be Donated To Ukraine

And as New Haveners begin taking off their masks with the end of the city’s indoor mask mandate, YNHH is planning on sending masks — and many more medical supplies — to Ukraine in a bid to help out medical colleagues working under siege amidst Russia’s ongoing military invasion.

YNHH President Christopher O’Connor said that the regional health system plans to donate $1 million worth of surgical masks, N95 masks, gowns, and other medical supplies to the U.S. Cooperative for International Patient Programs (USCIPP).

“By providing a large amount of personal protective gear, such as surgical masks, gowns, gloves and N95 masks, we hope to help those caring for the injured stay safe and healthy,” reads a YNHH email press release sent out Tuesday afternoon. ​“The medical staffs at each of our delivery networks, in collaboration with the Yale School of Medicine, will also be making donations to an agency focused on humanitarian efforts related to the conflict.”

The press release states that that the USCIPP will handle all of the logistics and cover the cost of transportation to Europe for this donation.