HARTFORD, Conn. (WTIC Radio)—Hartford HealthCare is shutting down its mega COVID-19 vaccination sites this week as the healthcare system pivots toward a more community-based approach.
At the Connecticut Convention Center, Hartford HealthCare President & CEO Jeffrey Flaks said the healthcare system is looking to shift its focus on local outreach with the closing of the sites that were opened last December.
Those efforts, he explained, include working with local partners to improve community-based sites and expanding the healthcare system's mobile health teams.
"We've sent our mobile health teams out more than two thousand times to prisons, to homeless shelters, to community centers, to churches, to various parking lots throughout Connecticut, and we have recognized that this is a permanent solution," Flaks said.
The closure also comes with the decline in volume, Chief Clinical Integration Officer James Cardon said. Hartford HealthCare staff worked to ensure other sites were well-equipped with resources once the mega sites were closed, he said.
According to Cardon and other officials, the Connecticut Convention Center saw a peak of 1600 people a day earlier this year. On its last day of operation Wednesday, the center had about 37 scheduled appointments with walk-ins expected until its official closure.
"I also think that sooner or later," Cardon joked while at the convention center, "as kind as these people have been, they want their building back."
Senior System Director of Infection Prevention Keith Grant called the closing yet another milestone in the pandemic, but with the delta variant raising concerns, he stressed that work still needed to be done.
The Central High School site in Bridgeport and the Sacred Heart University site in Fairfield were also closed down on Wednesday.
On July 1, Hartford HealthCare will be opening more community-based sites in Mystic, Stratford and West Hartford, to name a few.
For more details on Hartford HealthCare's vaccination sites, visit the system's website.
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