Nearly a month since Connecticut made COVID-19 vaccines available to everyone age 16 and up, vaccination rates among people living in underserved communities are still lagging compared with the rest of the state.
Data released Thursday shows about 38 percent of people living in ZIP codes identified by the state as vulnerable communities have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Meanwhile, about 50 percent of the state’s population overall has received at least one shot of vaccine.
That disparity comes as the state is moving ahead with easing some of its COVID-19 restrictions with Gov. Ned Lamont again promising on Thursday a return to a “new normal.”
Beginning Saturday, the state’s curfew on dine-in service at restaurants will be pushed back from 11 p.m. to midnight. Bars will be able to serve alcoholic drinks outdoors without food, and restaurants will not have restrictions on table sizes.
As Connecticut expands its reopening, the state on Friday recorded 786 new COVID cases diagnosed from 38,830 tests for a one-day positivity rate of 2.02 percent. Hospitalizations dropped by a net 20 patients for a total of 383. Thirteen deaths attributed to the disease brought the state’s official death toll to 8,097.
Josh Geballe, chief operating officer for Lamont, said the vaccination rate among the vulnerable ZIP codes “ticked up another percentage point” in the past week, but he admitted there was still more work to be done.
The percentage of people fully vaccinated in those ZIP codes sits at a little under 25 percent, compared with the more than 35 percent of people who are now fully vaccinated statewide.
The state data appears to show significant disparities in vaccination across race and ethnicity. While nearly 61 percent of the state’s eligible non-Hispanic, white population has received at least one dose, about 36 percent of people identified as Black have received at least one shot. Among Hispanic people, the number is a little over 42 percent, while about 58 percent of people identified as Asian and Pacific Islanders have received at least their first dose.
The data also shows greater disparities in vaccination among younger people. Among those ages 16 to 34, just 19 percent of eligible Black people received at least one dose, compared with 49 percent of Asian or Pacific Islanders and 44 percent of whites.
That means that while some smaller, wealthier and majority-white towns have surpassed 70 percent of their population with at least one dose of vaccine, larger cities and communities with vulnerable populations are still lagging.
As of Thursday, the top six communities for vaccine coverage — Canaan, Lyme, Salisbury, Old Saybrook and Kent — all reported more than 70 percent of residents had received one dose or more. In Canaan, more than 76 percent of its about 1,000 residents have received at least one dose.
Nearly all of the towns in the top six have populations under 10,000, with the exception of Old Saybrook.
However, vaccination rates in some of the largest cities rank much lower. In Hartford, just over 31 percent of the city’s 122,000 residents have received at least one dose, ranking it second to last.
In Bridgeport, the state’s largest city at more than 144,000 people, about one-third of residents have received a first shot.
The vaccination data by municipality shows communities identified as having a high-need population still rank lower for vaccine coverage. However, some of those communities saw vaccination gains in the past week.
Danbury, Middletown, Stamford and Meriden all saw the percentages of their populations that have received at least one shot grow by about 4 percent or more in the past week. All were identified as having underserved populations, according to the state data. East Hartford, Derby and Norwalk saw significant increases, as well.
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