“We will not be able to entertain 16-17 year olds, but we will be able to entertain 18-year-olds with Moderna.”
Caroline Baisley – Greenwich Director of Dept of HealthLastly she said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine took off pretty strong back in February when it arrived and went to most of the hospitals.
“It’s estimated that some time in May that supply will outweigh demand,” she said. “That will be absolutely fabulous.”
Paulmeno shared data from NPR Click here.
Connecticut is a Red Zone
As a Red Zone, Connecticut has more than 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people, which indicates unchecked community spread.
As of March 29, there was an average of 1,217 new cases per day in CT, which is 34 new daily cases per 100,000 people. (Three weeks ago it was 769). There is an average of 5 new deaths a day in CT.
Paulmeno noted that “viruses are not alive,” and cannot be killed.
“They don’t reproduce; they replicate,” she said, adding that the predominant variant in Connecticut was the UK Variant.
“It’s really pretty scary,” she said.
She said antibiotics will not work against the virus, but they can work for secondary infections.
“We’ve seen a lot of people through contact tracing who have been extremely ill, many with secondary infections,” she said, adding that Remdesivir, an antiviral drug, was the first first medication approved for treating Covid-19, and Dexamethasone, a cortisone product, reduces Covid-19 inflammation.
Paulmeno said a large cause of concern were “long haulers,” who are people who develop symptoms that don’t go away.
“But we also have people who also have no symptoms. They come down with Covid and never know it,” she said. “From a public health perspective we should have been testing everybody. Because with Covid, those who don’t have any symptoms go about like Typhoid Mary spreading the virus, not even knowing they have it…And we have so many people, who for so many different reasons, will not wear a mask. I find that very alarming.”
“With this particular virus, the most contagious period of time is two to three days before you develop symptoms, if you ever get symptoms,” she said. “This is why it’s so important that everybody be wearing a mask and social distancing.”
The UK Variant, South African Variant and the Brazilian Variant are all moderately more resistant to the antibodies from the vaccine or the actual disease.
NPR’s simulation map shows how rapidly viruses spread and how progressively increased levels of vaccinated people can halt the disease spread.
“We need that to stay in place to develop herd immunity,” she said.
Paulmeno talked about droplets and aerosols and how the airborne nature of the virus means people working in health care and doing home visits must take multiple precautions.
Board of Health member Dr. Andy Bronin explained the difference between droplets and aerosol.
“A droplet is a projectile that drops. Aerosol hangs out there in the air, and if it’s an unventilated room will hang out in the air for hours. It will hang out there for as long as an aerosol in your bathroom or smoke in a bar. You don’t know who in a space is sharing air with you, in a space that is not ventilated.
Probably the worst place you could be is a bar or restaurant that is not ventilated and there is an adequate mass of people that some of them might have Covid, and one cough, and it’s not a cough at you, it’s the aerosol that hangs in the air literally for hours.
Aerosol is probably the one that’s going to get you.”
Dr. Andy Bronin
Paulmeno explained that since earlier in the pandemic, the definition of what is considered a “high risk” contact has changed.
“Now it is 15 minutes within a span of 24 hours,” Paulmeno said. “It’s not one person for 15 minutes, but the accumulation of every person you’ve been in contact with for 24 hours, unmasked, within 6 feet of an infected person or people. That’s now considered a high-risk contact.”
Paulmeno shared a slide that showed a smoker’s lung and a lung with Covid.
“With all that debris in your lungs, you can’t breathe,” she said. “For any of us who are healthcare professionals, one of the worst ways people can find themselves in a hospital or critically ill is when you can’t breathe.”
Other presentations of Covid are “Covid Toes,” but it could be any infected organ.
“Studies are showing that even people who don’t have symptoms, they’re finding damage in their organs,” she said. “They have scarring in their lungs and other things going on.”
She said she was concerned about people who are not covered by Worker’s Compensation.
“Everyone who has Covid is going to have a pre-existing condition for the rest of their life,” she said.
Paulmeno said the mRNA vaccines were synthetically engineered and very safe.
“You actually have no virus in either the Moderna or Pfizer BioNTech. No virus enters your body,” she said. “The technology is probably going to be very helpful to us with all the variants.”
She urged people to get vaccinated. She said there had been minimal side effects from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
“These last a day or two,” she said. “I would take that any day of the week over being in the ICU, where you’re tied down, you may or may not be conscious, you have tubes down your throat, you can’t see people.”
“These vaccines are so safe,” she added. “How lucky can you be to have a vaccine that you are pretty much guaranteed that you will not be sick enough to get into a hospital where people all around you are dying, and you are virtually guaranteed not to die.”