HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - COVID-19 vaccination sites in Connecticut slowly reopened Tuesday as cleanup from Monday’s winter storm continued.
The Yale New Haven Health system, which runs several hospitals in southern Connecticut, kept its vaccination sites closed until noon while staff were contacting people to reschedule appointments.
The state’s largest vaccination site in the parking lot of the University of Connecticut football stadium in East Hartford also delayed its reopening until the afternoon as workers removed snow from the site.
The storm, which dumped up to 19 inches of snow in some parts of the state, forced the cancellations of 10,000 vaccination appointments on Monday, state officials said. Gov. Lamont’s office said it was working with provider to get vaccinations by the end of the week to people whose appointments were canceled.
“Many providers said they were planning on extended hours and reaching out to individuals directly for rescheduling,” said Max Reiss, a spokesman for the governor.
The Connecticut National Guard delivered 975 first doses to UConn Health in Farmington early Tuesday morning from another state location that had excess supply. That allowed UConn Health to begin catching up on inoculations that were cancelled earlier after the system received fewer doses than expected.
“We are moving down the list of canceled patients starting with today’s and moving forward to reschedule them as quickly as possible,” Anne Horbatuck, vice president of ambulatory services, said in a statement.
Some providers, including Hartford HealthCare, kept their vaccination and testing programs open as scheduled Monday and Tuesday.
In other coronavirus related news:
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ROAD RACES
Runners in Connecticut will be allowed to participate in road races beginning March 1, state officials said.
The state Department of Economic and Community Development notified organizers that new state guidelines allow them to begin scheduling races on or after that date.
“We expect to finalize protocols closer to March 1 but have been guiding folks to the safeguard measures we had in place for these races last summer/fall,” Commissioner David Lehman said in an email Tuesday.
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NEW NUMBERS
The governor’s office reported 14 new deaths associated with COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total for the pandemic to 7,133.
There were 900 people being treated in state hospitals, down 12 patients from Monday.
But the number of people dying and being hospitalized has been steadily declining over the past month.
The seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate in Connecticut was at 3.86%, which is down from 6.68% on Jan. 17.
State health departments are calculating positivity rate differently across the country, but for Connecticut the AP calculates the rate by dividing new cases by test specimens using data from The COVID Tracking Project.
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