Nursing home workers and hospital staff in Connecticut will be required to get the COVID-19 booster shot by February 11.
COVID cases among nursing home staff have doubled in the past week, to 14-hundred, according to Social Services Commissioner, Deidre Gifford.
Resident cases were also on the rise.
Thursday, Governor Ned Lamont announced a new executive order mandating that staff and contractors at state hospitals and nursing homes get a COVID-19 booster shot by February 11.
Many of those employees were among the first to get vaccinated.
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Officials said they don’t believe they’re necessarily hesitant to get a booster but rather just exhausted and haven’t gotten around to it.
“You ought to remember that those two shots were extremely effective, kept us with a very low infection rate for an awful long time, and we have another couple of innings to go and the booster keeps you safe, keeps everyone in the game, allows you to go about your keeping everyone in the game, allows us to keep our schools open, allows us to keep our businesses open, and that’s why we’re giving this one extra push,” said Lamont.
The Lamont administration says it’s considering extending the booster requirement to other state employees, like teachers.
However, it is cognizant that the governor’s emergency powers will expire in mid-February.
Lamont said he plans to put forth a group of executive orders he’d like the legislature to sign off on continuing.
In addition to the governor’s orders, leadership from the Connecticut Hospital Association announced that they are implementing a similar mandatory booster shot requirement for all hospital and health system employees and clinical staff statewide.
The state’s positivity rate remained flat on Thursday at just under 23%.
Officials said 90% of the cases stemmed from the Omicron variant.
There were 121 more deaths in the last week and 108 more hospitalizations since Wednesday.
Lamont said the 10% of the population that is not vaccinated makes up 70% of those rising hospitalization rates.
