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With COVID vaccines expected to remain scarce into early spring, Connecticut has scrapped its complicated plans to prioritize immunizations for people under 65 with certain chronic conditions and front-line workers. Instead, the state will primarily base eligibility on age.
Gov. Ned Lamont pointed to statistics showing the risk of death and hospitalization from COVID-19 rises significantly by age.
Yet, shifting to an age-based priority system after health workers, nursing home patients and people 65 and up have been offered vaccines has frustrated people with health conditions such as cancer or diabetes who thought they would be next in line. It also could exacerbate the difficulty in getting people in underserved communities and those in minority racial and ethnic groups vaccinated, health experts said.
A pair of small studies found that patients previously infected with COVID-19 given their first vaccine dose showed the sort of robust immune response that people generally tend to have following their second dose.
Could wearing two masks be better than one? The emergence of new and more infectious COVID-19 variants has led health experts to consider "double masking" as a potential way to better protect yourself and others.
How Dangerous Is Coronavirus to the Middle-Aged?
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Jan. 26, 2021 (HealthDay News) Middle-aged folks risk of dying from a COVID-19 infection is higher than they might think, a new study reports.
The risk of death from COVID increases with age, but researchers have found that the upward curve grows exponentially steeper with every extra decade.
One out of every 800 people entering early middle age at 45 will die from their COVID infection, 55-year-olds have a 1 in 240 risk of dying if they contract the coronavirus, and 65-year-olds have a 1 in 70 chance, said lead researcher Andrew Levin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.