Daily COVID-19 infection rate hits highest total since June
Connecticut’s positive-test rate for the coronavirus jumped to 2.4 percent for the day on Tuesday, a level not seen since June, before COVID-19 cases fell sharply through the summer.
But the current surges throughout the state are more geographically isolated than spreads the state saw in the spring, according to Gov. Ned Lamont and Dr. Albert Ko, a top epidemiologist at Yale School of Medicine and coronavirus adviser to the governor.
“Overall our positive rate has been going down until recently,” Lamont said in his daily news briefing from the State Capitol, shortly after he participated in the White House task force meeting on the pandemic.
Ko said that increases in social gatherings have resulted in the latest transmissions, but most of the population still adheres to the distancing learned last spring, as hundreds, then thousands fell ill.
“We still have much of the state having overall reduced rates of social contact,” Ko said, stressing that the cautions of April and May continue to affect most behaviors and localize the upticks. “That’s actually protecting the state. But these are going to be more brush fires than wild fires.”
The medical advances include the large increase in testing, from a few hundred a day to now more than 13,000 a day, allowing patients to be treated and isolated early. “We’re seeing less ill people who don’t need admission to the intensive care unit or mechanical ventilation,” Ko said, crediting a study in England that showed that steroids can cut mortality by 30 percent among patients.
“We now have better ways than we did back in March and April in treating our patients and making sure they get out of the hospital rather than dying in the hospital,” Ko said, pointing to smaller, recent infection outbreaks in Danbury and southeastern Connecticut. “I think the citizens of Connecticut are doing a good job of maintaining social distancing.”
Despite the one-days pike based on reported tests and positive results, the 7- day average positivity rate stood at 1.5 percent Tuesday. That’ s slightly above the recent averages, which climbed from below 1 percent in early September.
And it’ s still far lower than the U.S. rate of 5.1 percent, according to Kaiser Family Foundation. The national rate has also drifted slightly higher in recent days.
Lamont and Ko warned against attending so-called super-spreading events, such as the recent White House reception that sickened many of the staff, visitors and President Donald Trump, whose response, Ko said, did not help the nationwide public health effort.
Lamont reported that there were 320 positive results among 13,398 tests, or 2.39 percent. There was a single new fatality, for a total of 4,533 dead in the pandemic. There was also a net increase of 17 patients, for a total of 172 hospitalizations, still just a fraction of the 1,972 hospitalized on April 22.
Because Connecticut is conducting so many tests, well more than the national average rate, the state’s total of newly reported cases is inching toward red-flag levels. Over the last seven says, the state has seen 86 cases per day per million residents — near the 100 level that is closely watched as a threshold.
The national average has climbed from 106 new daily cases per million people to 151 in the last month.
Ko said that contact-tracing reports from around the world show that within households, only about 12 percent to 15 percent of people get infected from other family members even though they shared the same space.
“That kind of under scores what we really learned about this epidemic: It’ s these super-spreading events. It’ s a rough rule that 20 percent of the people are responsible for about 80 percent of the transmission ,” K os aid .“It’ s those large gatherings. It’ s when you getpeopl ehuddling,wh ether it’ s at bars, at restaurants or any type of event where you have a lot of people, that increases the probability that you will encounter one of those people who are apt to be a super spread er .”
Ko warned that under-served communities remain vulnerable to the virus. He recalled that the first 500 deaths, which occurred between March 17 and the second week of April, were important lessons in both coping with the pandemic and planning for the eventually reopening of the state’s economy.
“We are still having breakthroughs,” Ko said. “For the most part in this second resurgence that we are experiencing, many of the nursing homes are being protected. That is something very different than what happened to us in the first month, in the first 500 deaths. We know that among our Latino and African American community that not only in Connecticut but throughout the country, has a disproportionate burden.”
La mont acknowledged that the state’ s infection rate closing in on the 36 states that comprise the list requiring visitors to Connecticut, New York and New J ersey to self-quarantine for two weeks or show state officials recent negative COV ID tests.
“We have to sort of re think it ,” Lamont said in response to a reporter’ s question .“Right now it’ s certainly a vast number of states ,” La mont said .“I think overall the travelers advisory has been very effective. It has reminded people from highly infected states, before you come to Connecticut get tested. When you get here quarantine. I think it has discouraged some unnecessary travel. But obviously this net is getting wider. We have to re think it .”
kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @Ken Dixon CT