Hillhouse Mass Vaccination Begins With 250 ​“Soft Opening” Appointments

Retired emergency medicine doctor Soni Clubb spent part of last March in bed sick with Covid-19.

Ten months later, she’s back on the front lines of the pandemic — helping vaccinate the elderly against the novel coronavirus at the newly opened Floyd Little Athletic Center mass vaccination site next to Hillhouse High School.

Clubb was one of over a dozen volunteer healthcare providers administering shots in arms Monday afternoon when this reporter swung by the mass vaccination site at 480 Sherman Pkway.

Monday marked the first day that the new Yale New Haven Health-city Health Department jointly run site opened its doors to eligible members of the general public.

The site opened on the same day that the governor announced that two New Haveners have tested positive for the UK variant of Covid-19, symbolizing the nation’s race to vaccinate the population as the coronavirus grows stronger and more transmissible.

YNHH Vice President, Behavioral Health & Emergency Services Mark Sevilla told the Independent by email that 250 people scheduled appointments to get vaccinated at the Hillhouse-adjacent location during its ​“soft opening” on Monday. He said they won’t know the number of ​“no shows” until later Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

When running at full capacity, the site will be open seven days a week and allow for 1,400 people to be vaccinated each day.

As Connecticut remains in Phase 1b of the governor’s statewide Covid-19 vaccine rollout, that meant that the patients ambling in and out of the athletic center-turned-vaccination clinic Monday were all Connecticut residents ages 75 and up who had scheduled appointments in advance. Click here or here to schedule an appointment online at the Hillhouse-adjacent vaccination site.

(Update: Click here to read the city’s Temporary Space Use Agreement with YNHH for the Floyd Little Athletic Center vaccination site. The signed agreement was provided to the Independent in response to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request.)

“Easy Peasy”

Decked out in a face shield, a blue surgical mask, and a white YNHH lab coat with her doctor’s ID pinned to her front pocket, Clubb sat at Station 2 of the 22 vaccination stations. The stations — desks spaced six feet apart — lined the athletic center’s corridor stretching from the Sherman Parkway entrance to a back parking lot by Crescent Street.

At around 2:15, a new patient arrived: Lee Chamberlain, a 76-year-old retiree from Guilford.

After making his way past a police officer security guard at the front entrance, and then after checking in at a welcome table in the athletic center’s atrium, Chamberlain was led by one of the site’s several dozen volunteers towards Clubb’s desk.

The retired doctor prepped Chamberlain on what he was about to receive. She said he should be on the look-out for a sore arm and flu-like symptoms. She said less than 5 percent of recipients report more severe side-effects like a heavy fatigue or headache. She made sure he didn’t have any allergies, and asked if he had any questions.

And after the shot, she said, volunteers at the site were going to watch him for 15 minutes to make sure he didn’t have any immediate reactions. That’s when they’d also make a follow up appointment for him to receive his second dose.

Chamberlain pulled off his sweater and rolled up his left sleeve. Clubb swabbed his shoulder as she lifted the syringe with the vaccine dose.

“All right, are you ready?” Clubb asked. ​“Here we go: 1, 2 … 3.”

With one gloved hand lightly holding Chamberlain’s shoulder in place, Clubb used her other hand to briefly stick the needle in his arm. A few seconds later, it was all over.

“A little boring, right?” she asked.

“That was it?” Chamberlain replied.

“A little anticlimactic,” Clubb agreed. ​“And you’re not immune yet. So continue to be super careful.”

“Thank you,” Chamberlain said. ​“Nice job. Easy. Easy peasy.”

From start to finish, Chamberlain was at Club’s Station 2 for around five minutes.

“Gratitude, Just Every Single Hour”

Another one of the site’s volunteers came by to schedule Chamberlain’s next appointment in a few weeks. Clubb, meanwhile, reflected on her decades as a practicing doctor — and the past 10 months of the pandemic.

She is a retired emergency medicine doctor who spent her residency at Yale New Haven Health, who spent much of her career at UConn, and whose husband currently works at YNHH. Her family lived on Huntington Street for 25 years before recently moving out of the city.

Towards the very beginning of the pandemic last year in March, she contracted Covid-19 and was bedridden for days.

Even while in bed, she recalled, she signed up with the Medical Reserve Corps to volunteer her medical expertise helping fellow Connecticut residents survive the pandemic.

Before her current volunteer position at Floyd Little Athletic Center, she was called in through the MRC to help with a mask distribution program in New Haven whereby she left masks and info sheets at people’s doors.

Then she helped out at a Covid-19 testing clinic run by Fair Haven Community Health Care.

And by the time the vaccines started rolling out late last month, she has volunteered administering shots at the New Haven Health Department on Meadow Street, in Torrington, and at Yale New Haven Hospital for Phase 1a-eligible healthcare providers.

“I was just waiting for this one to come up,” she said about the Floyd Little site, ​“because it’s right in the neighborhood, easily accessible. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of patients from this community.”

When asked how she felt on Monday — as a retired medical provider who had Covid herself earlier on in the pandemic and is now helping elderly residents survive the ongoing pandemic by vaccinating them, she said, ​“When you meet each individual person, it’s just so poignant to be able to give them that vaccine and feel like you’re going to prevent them from getting Covid. It’s an unbelievable honor. Gratitude, just every single hour.”

“Doing My Civic Part”

In the athletic center’s indoor track, which has been converted into a waiting area for people who have just received their shots, Chamberlain sat next to his Guilford neighbor, Liz Wexler.

He said he didn’t have any trouble signing up to get a shot at the Hillhouse site — because he had the help of Wexler, who helped him navigate the online registration form.

“It feels good,” the 76-year-old retiree said about getting vaccinated. ​“I feel like I’m doing my civic part, my civic duty to protect myself and others.”

Stephen Salzman (pictured), an 83-year Milford resident who works as a lawyer in New Haven, agreed as he walked down the front steps towards his car on Sherman Parkway.

“It was terrific,” he said about the experience of getting vaccinated at this new site. ​“It was very prompt.”

He said his wife helped him register online to schedule an appointment.

“All of the publicity about national locations with long lines,” he said. ​“That’s not here.”