Despite a “slight uptick” in the number of COVID-19 cases in the state in recent weeks, the number of patients being treated for the disease at Yale New Haven Health hospitals continues to fall, officials said Monday.

It’s a sign, they said, of the effectiveness of vaccines and booster shoots.

“We’re hoping that with continued vigilance and also some better weather where people are getting outside and the temperatures are going up and humidity is going up, we’ll see less transmission,” Dr. Thomas Balcezak, Yale New Haven Health’s chief clinical officer, said during a virtual press briefing.

Chris O’Connor, the system’s chief executive officer, reported 38 COVID-19 patients were being treated Monday at Yale New Haven Health’s five hospitals, including one patient at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London and two at Westerly Hospital. He said the numbers contrast “quite spectacularly” with the 767 patients who were hospitalized on Jan. 11 at the peak of the surge associated with the omicron variant.

The most recent increase in cases is largely attributable to the emergence of the BA.2 omicron subvariant.

Balcezak said the counting of COVID-19 cases has been complicated by the increased use of home testing kits, which yield results that for the most part go unreported to health officials. He said data from mass testing sites, wastewater-testing and hospitalization rates can still provide a “sense” of the prevailing positivity rate.

On Monday, the state Department of Public Health began reporting test positivity as a rolling seven-day average and began reporting the change in hospitalizations over the last seven days instead of since the previous day. “This change will align Connecticut’s test positivity reporting with the same method used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and will not impact the ability to detect increases in COVID-19 cases due to new variants,” the department said.

Monday’s statewide numbers, released by Gov. Ned Lamont’s office, showed the positivity rate over the last seven days is 4.26%. Hospitalizations numbered 93, down one over the last seven days.

Balcezak encouraged the immunocompromised and those 50 and older who got a booster shot more than four months ago to get a second booster.

Vaccination remains the best protection against COVID-19, particularly against severe illness and death, he said, and those most at risk remain older people and those with such conditions as diabetes and underlying lung disease and whose immune systems have been compromised by cancer treatments.

Some have suggested healthy people needn’t hurry to get a second booster.

“As I heard someone say,” Balcezk said, “If you’re over the age of 50 and you have an underlying medical condition you should run to get a (second) booster. If you’re over the age of 50 and qualify but are otherwise healthy, maybe you should walk. And if you’re under the age of 50, you should wait.”

He noted that the demand for vaccines and boosters dropped off amid the decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, which he suggested reflects human nature if not logic.

“The time to get vaccinated is when cases are low,” Balcezak said.

The Yale New Haven Health officials said more than 90% of the system’s employees and staff members are fully vaccinated and boosted. In a document it was required to provide to the Rhode Island Department of Health, Westerly Hospital reported last week that 943 of its 1,048 heath care personnel had received either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

As for COVID-19 treatments, Balcezak said Yale New Haven Health is using a variety of therapeutics, including Evusheld, long-term antibodies that can help patients whose immune systems are unable to develop protection against the disease. Monoclonal antibodies and other drugs are in wide use.

“The treatments are fairly good but not as good as prevention,” he said, adding few new treatments are on the horizon.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com