CT COVID metrics continue steady decline, data shows

Connecticut’s COVID numbers continued to decline in the past week, but with colder months approaching and hundreds of breakthrough cases being recorded, health experts say there could still be some cause for concern.

In the past week, there were 804 new breakthrough cases in vaccinated people, according to the state’s latest data released Thursday.

There have been a total of 17,564 breakthrough cases and 157 breakthrough deaths recorded in Connecticut, the data shows. All of the deaths have involved people 35 and older and nearly 71 percent of them have been at least 75 years old, the data shows.

The seven-day rolling average of new COVID cases reported Thursday stands at less than half the number reported in midSeptember, according to state figures. The number of patients hospitalized with the disease has fallen below 200 statewide, down from well over 350 in mid-September.

“Connecticut’s doing great right now, the numbers are definitely coming down,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist and system director of infectious diseases at Hartford HealthCare.

At the same time, he said the percentage of patients in intensive care units and on ventilators is relatively high. But overall, he said the number of intensive care and hospitalized COVID patients are declining.

“Compared to last year and previous peaks, we’re doing way better,” he added.

On Thursday, Connecticut recorded 443 new COVID cases in the previous 24 hours with a daily positivity rate of 1.77 percent. Hospitalizations dropped by a net of three patients, bringing the statewide census to 191. The state reported 30 more COVID-related deaths in the past week, increasing the statewide death toll to 8,751.

Of Connecticut’s eight counties, only Windham County in the far northeast was marked in red as an area of “high” community transmission of the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tolland and Fairfield counties are now below the threshold the agency recommends for people to wear masks indoors regardless of whether they have been vaccinated. The remaining five counties are areas of “moderate” spread where masking is still recommended.

Connecticut’s heat map of cases by municipality, which uses a slightly different metric than the CDC, shows 34 communities are in the red alert zone, meaning they have experienced 15 or more cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks.

Overall, more than 90 percent of eligible Connecticut residents have received at least one dose, according to the CDC, while nearly 79 percent of the total population have started the vaccination process.

The weekly number of doses administered in Connecticut has remained high over the past month, a period that coincided with deadlines for state and many private employees to comply with vaccine mandates, but also when booster shots became available to millions of Americans.

CDC data shows Connecticut and some nearby states are lagging in booster uptake compared with others that have seen comparatively lower initial vaccination rates. About 8.6 percent of those who are fully vaccinated in Connecticut have received a booster, according to the CDC data, lower than the rates of South Carolina, Tennessee, Montana and others.

Some areas of Connecticut are also still lagging well below the state average vaccination rate. In the state’s eastern rural areas, many towns report less than 60 percent of residents have received at least one dose, according to the data. Hartford and New Britain also report less than 60 percent of their residents have started the vaccination process.

“Vaccination falls along ideologic lines,” Wu said. “Communities tend to stick together, so if there’s a community that’s more likely not to be vaccinated, that’s probably why you’re seeing swaths of a region that are undervaccinated. It’s not just Connecticut, that’s the same for the whole entire United States.”

Overall, the state is doing better than the rest of the country, Wu said, but “it’s all relative because we shouldn’t even be in this position in the first place.”

“It’s rosy because it’s better, but compared to where we should be, it’s not so rosy,” he added.