DPH issues alert for Norwich
Infections on the rise in eastern part of state
Public health officials have issued a COVID-19 alert for Norwich as corona virus cases have surged in the city and across the rest of the eastern half of Connecticut in recent weeks.
Norwich now has the highest rate of COVID-19 cases per capita in Connecticut at 24 cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks — about five times higher than the statewide rate—promptin gs te rn warnings from local leaders, school closures throughout the city and the formal alert urging residents to stay home.
“It’s our responsibility as a city to address this and that applies to every single resident. I’m asking every resident to take this as serious as we are here today ,” Norwich Mayor Peter Nystrom said Thursday afternoon .“We own this. These are our families, our neighbors, our community and we can’ t allow this to happen.”
Norwich leads a pack of eastern Connecticut areas that have seen a sharp increase in cases in recent weeks, pushing the state toward a higher coronavirus test positivity rate and more hospitalizations than it experienced over the summer.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced 192 positive results out of 10,372 tests Thursday, for a 1.9% rate — the state’s highest in a single day since mid-June. Connecticut has now recorded a 1.3% positivity rate over the past seven days, up from as low as 0.7% over the summer.
The state now has 107 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, up three from Wednesday and up 32 since Monday.
“We’ve got an uptick,” Lamont said Thursday. “Are we surprised by this? No. I think it was some---
thing that we anticipated.”
The state recorded another three coronavirus-linked deaths Thursday, bringing its total to 4,511 during the pandemic. The United States has seen 207,465 COVID-19 deaths in total, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University.
The COVID-19 alert for Norwich is only the second issued in the state so far — the first was during a recent spike in Danbury — and urges, but does not require, residents to limit their trips outside their homes, avoid any indoor gatherings or large outdoor gatherings and wear a mask any time they must be out.
After recording relatively low levels of COVID-19 for much of the pandemic, New London County now has the highest rate of cases of any Connecticut county. Whereas the area had only two patients hospitalized with the disease on Sept. 18, that number had increased to 15 as of Thursday.
Along with Norwich, New London, with 42 cases from September20-26, andWindham, with 36 in that time, also ranked among the hardest hit towns and cities in data released Thursday, joining Danbury (73 cases), Hartford (68), Bridgeport (60), New Britain (56), Waterbury (50) and West Hartford (38). An outbreak at a Colchester nursing home has led that town’s numbers to tick upward as well.
Officials in Norwich, New London and elsewhere have said they can’t point to any particular factor driving the recent increase. But the spike has raised alarms, prompting state and local officials to gather in Norwich on Thursday afternoon to discuss the cases and announce all public schools and the Norwich Free Academy would close in-person classes for the next two weeks.
“From the data we’re looking and the location of where everyone is living, we have not yet determined a common link and I don’t know that we’ll be able to get to that point,” Nystrom said. “But we’ re here to emphasize the seriousness of this issue.”
Deidre Gifford, the state’s acting commissioner of public health, resisted the suggestion that the increase in New London County grew out of issues at Backus Hospital in Norwich, which experienced an outbreak among staff last month. Nursing home officials say the outbreak at the Colchester facility may have begun after a resident there returned from a procedure at Backus.
“I would really caution against an approach that identifies a particular entity as causing an outbreak,” Gifford said.
Mary Bylone, first selectman of Colchester, said the town’s number of COVID cases have doubled in recent weeks, partly due to the nursing home outbreak but also because, she believes, people aren’t wearing masks as muchas they did earlier in the pandemic.
“People are more mobile now, but we have to remember why it was we had so few cases back in April and May,” she said. “And that’s because everyone was wearing am ask and properly social distancing and need to remember that.”