Community Health Center in Middletown starts distributing COVID vaccines to its healthcare workers

Originally posted at WTNH

Over 200 healthcare workers for the Community Health Center (CHC) in Middletown received their first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine Saturday during an employee vaccination clinic.

Mary Blankson, Chief Nursing Officer at CHC said, “We really wanted to make sure we got everyone on our core teams, all of our frontline workers. We do COVID-19 testing all across the state, up to 4,000 a day, so we have a lot of staff that just really needed to get that protection.”

They hope that patients seeing healthcare workers get vaccinated will encourage them to take the vaccine when it’s their turn.

“We’re hoping that it will improve vaccine acceptance…we want to encourage our communities to trust this vaccine, to take this vaccine, and to hopefully reduce the rates in Connecticut and across the country,” Blankson added.

They also had a last-minute vaccine clinic on Christmas Day, and around 240 healthcare workers went in during the holiday to get their first dose.