Who is being hospitalized with COVID-19 in Connecticut? Almost exclusively unvaccinated people, officials say
The overwhelming majority of Connecticut residents currently hospitalized with COVID-19 were not vaccinated before contracting the disease, hospital officials say.
Despite more than half of Connecticut adults having been vaccinated, the state currently has 518 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, up nearly 40% over the past month. But data from local hospitals suggests this isn’t because vaccines aren’t working but rather because not enough people have yet been vaccinated.
Yale New Haven Health, for example, has treated only six COVID-19 patients who have been fully vaccinated, out of hundreds who have come in and out of the system in recent weeks. Of those six, all were older and most had underlying conditions, yet none required intensive care and all have left the hospital.
“Those are patients who would have been very much at risk for death a year ago, and they left the hospital and survived COVID without a severe course of illness,” said Dr. Deborah Rhodes, Yale New Haven’s vice president of care signature. “I really think it speaks to the effectiveness of vaccination.”
In a recent census of COVID-19 patients in its facilities, Hartford HealthCare found not one had previously been vaccinated — again signaling the success of vaccines, which are not 100% effective in blocking infection but are considered almost entirely protective against severe illness and death.
At UConn Health, Dr. David Banach has likewise seen hospitalizations mostly among people who have not been vaccinated or who have been only partially vaccinated. Amid concern that some variants, including one first detected in New York, might have some resistance to existing vaccine, Banach said clinical results have been promising.
“From what we’re seeing, there is still a lot of confidence in the vaccines being protective against the existing variants,” he said. “Right now the general consensus is that vaccines still hold their protective efficacy.”
With more than 80% of Connecticut residents 65 and older having been vaccinated against COVID-19, the average age of hospitalized patients has dropped in recent weeks. Those who show up with serious illness, officials say, have tended to be those who were not eligible for vaccination or who had not yet been able to receive one.
Now, with vaccines available to all Connecticut adults, hospitalizations could soon dip. As of Wednesday, 46% of Connecticut residents and more than half of adults had received at least one vaccine dose, while 29% of residents were fully vaccinated.
“As we roll out vaccinations, we will see hospitalizations decline,” Banach said. “The first step is going to be reduced infections, and that will be followed by reduced hospitalizations and deaths.”
But since patients aren’t considered immune until two weeks after their final shot, it can take a while before state data shows declining hospitalizations.
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COVID-19 cases in Connecticut have risen over the past six weeks, which experts have attributed to a decline in vigilance and an increase in the spread of more contagious variants. That has translated to a modest increase in the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19, though not an increase in people dying due to the disease.
“When I walk around New Haven and other parts of Connecticut, I’m struck by how people seem to have relaxed their social distancing,” Rhodes said. “I think that’s because there’s some fatigue from COVID and also this sense that we’re somehow all protected by the proportion of the community that has been vaccinated.”
To Rhodes, the continued presence of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and ICUs isn’t a mark against the vaccines. Instead, it’s a reminder of their importance.
“My main concern lies not with the failure of the vaccine, because I think we’ve demonstrated that the vaccines work,” she said. “My main concern lies with reluctance of the remaining segments of our population to become vaccinated.”
Alex Putterman can be reached at aputterman@courant.com.
