More COVID-19 news
1 Lamont: Recovered COVID patients exempt from state’s travel rules
As Connecticut’s COVID hospitalizations dropped Friday for the third straight day, Gov. Ned Lamont overhauled the state’s travel restrictions, requiring those arriving here to quarantine for at least 10 days. But there are some exceptions.
The rule applies to travelers from everywhere except New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
The new travel rules, enacted through an executive order, now also allows those who have tested positive and recovered within 90 days to avoid quarantining. Those who test positive but have been asymptomatic for 10 days are also exempt.
Travelers can also avoid the 10-day quarantine if they test negative 72 hours before they arrive or afterward.
Essential workers will also still be exempt under the rules, which take effect Saturday.
That comes as the number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in Connecticut fell on Friday for the third consecutive day. There were 38 fewer patients hospitalized with the illness, bringing the state’s total to 1,167.
The state reported 2,680 new COVID cases Friday out of 39,128 tests for a daily positivity rate of 6.85 percent statewide.
There were 29 more deaths attributed to the virus, pushing the death toll to 5,581.
Even as hospitalizations have declined, a field hospital is also going up in the state’s capitol in a scene reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic in the spring.
Members of the state National Guard set up a field hospital Friday at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford.
The state Department of Public Health also announced it would open a COVID Recovery Facility – essentially a COVID-19only nursing home — at Greentree Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Waterford.
The facilities were originally envisioned as a space to take COVID-19 patients from hospitals who were recovering to free up beds. Their role has since expanded to take on nursing home patients who are infected with COVID to help prevent the spread of the disease inside the facilities, according to the DPH.
The Lamont administration anticipated on Friday the second COVID-19 vaccine will be cleared for emergency use.
The second vaccine, developed by Moderna, uses the same messenger RNA technology as the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech already being administered.
But while the PfizerBioNTech vaccine must be stored at ultra-cold temperatures before it is used, Moderna’s vaccine can be kept at moderately cold temperatures.
If approved, the state expects to begin receiving doses of the Moderna vaccine over several days next week.
It will help compensate for the 13 percent shortfall the state is expecting in Pfizer vaccines.
As of Thursday, nearly 2,000 doses of the vaccine had been administered in Connecticut, the governor’s office said.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots for full immunity. Pfizer’s doses are spaced out over three weeks and Moderna’s over four weeks.
Both vaccines are first going to front-line health care workers and residents and staff of nursing homes. Friday morning, Lamont appeared outside The Reservoir Center, a nursing home in West Hartford, as the first dos
es of vaccine were given to the center’s staff.
The West Hartford home was one of five facilities selected to receive the first shots of the Pfizer vaccine early, ahead of the broader federal rollout next week. The vaccinations are being carried out by staff from CVS and Walgreens.
Several other states, including Ohio, West Virginia and Florida, have also begun inoculating nursing homes this week.
The state Department of Correction also announced Friday that a 47-year-old male inmate
died Thursday from complications from COVID-19. The inmate, who was not identified, had been transferred to a hospital last month from the medical isolation unit at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Instituation in Suffield.
Under the governor’s vaccine distribution plan, inmates will be vaccinated during the second phase after residents of nursing homes and front-line health workers. The group also includes teachers, the elderly, essential workers and first responders.