Pfizer Vaccine Approved As More CT Businesses Mandate Vaccination

CONNECTICUT —The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech.

In an address delivered Monday in the wake of the FDA's news, President Joe Biden called upon all citizens to get vaccinated, and all businesses to mandate the vaccine for their employees.

Some businesses in Connecticut didn't wait for the FDA approval or the president's encouragement. Cigna Corporation, a Bloomfield-based health service business, announced it is requiring employees be vaccinated or tested weekly prior to entering any of its worksites across the country.

On Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont told all state employees, including school teachers, they need to be vaccinated by early fall. The state already had a vaccine mandate for about 8,000 state employees in health care and the prisons.

U.S. vaccinations bottomed out in July, just as the delta variant began to refill hospital beds. In Connecticut, as in the rest of the country, there's been a slight uptick in jabs in the past two weeks.

According to the latest data from the state Department of Public Health, vaccinations of the youngest eligible age tier, residents 12-15, are up 2 percentage points from the previous week. At the current pace, a very little over 50 percent in that tier will be fully vaccinated by the time school opens in about a week.

It's been clear that many employers and government agencies have been waiting for the FDA's thumbs up before mandating the vaccine for their workers. About 148,000 New York City teachers and school employees will have to get at least a first dose by Sept. 27, now that the FDA has given its blessing. The Pentagon also wasted no time Monday mandating coronavirus vaccination for all 1.4 million service members in the U.S. military.

What's less clear is what effect the approval of another federal agency will have on the traditionally government-skeptical vaccine hesitant. A poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that just 31 percent of unvaccinated people would be more likely to take the jab were it blessed by the FDA.

As uninspiring as the numbers may seem, compared to vaccinations across the rest of the country, Connecticut is about as good as it gets. The Nutmeg State is behind only Massachusetts and Vermont in total vaccine doses administered per 100,000 of the total population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lamont called the vaccine's FDA approval "...an important moment for our fight against the coronavirus as schools are set to return and more companies are looking to see the safe return to work."

Coming off the weekend, the number of Connecticut residents hospitalized due to the coronavirus is 369, the highest it's been since April.

By far, Hartford County leads the state in the number of residents hospitalized with COVID-19, with 126 patients. New Haven County follows, at 99.

The state's daily coronavirus positivity rate, a function of the number of new cases against the number of residents tested for COVID-19, has been hovering around 3-3.5 percent for the better part of August. On Monday, DPH reported a rate of 3.5 percent, on 1,554 new, confirmed cases across 44,354 tests.

See Also: Another Major Connecticut Company Issues Vaccine Mandate For Employees

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