Community Health Center Requiring COVID-19 Vaccine Booster For Employees

MIDDLETOWN, CT — Middletown-based Community Health Center, Inc. is requiring all employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster, officials announced Monday.

All clinical and patient-facing staff must receive the booster by Feb. 1. All other employees, including those working remotely, must receive a booster by March 1, according to a news release.

CHC, which serves more than 150,000 patients statewide, previously instituted a requirement that all staff be fully vaccinated with two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. The booster requirement will apply to employees eligible to receive the dose per CDC guidelines, according to officials.

“At CHC, we have followed the science in our approach to protect our patients and staff during the COVID pandemic,” said Marwan Haddad, MD, chair of CHC’s COVID-19 Advisory Group. “The evidence is clear that people who are vaccinated and boosted are less likely to get COVID and less likely to be hospitalized than those who are unvaccinated and those who are vaccinated and not boosted. With this highly transmissible Omicron wave, we want to make sure that our staff is as fully protected as possible, which in turn protects our patients and communities.”