Positive test rate highest in 4 months

Hospitalizations also increase as 320 new cases are reported

The positive test rate for COVID-19 increased to 2.4% in Connecticut on Tuesday, Gov. Ned Lamont said, marking the highest positivity since June 12.

“It’s not unexpected, but it’s unnerving and a little exhausting,” Lamont said about the uptick in positivity. “While we are exhausted and wish this was behind us, we also know what it takes to beat this virus and beat it for good.”

From late June through early September, the state kept its positivity rate mostly below the gold standard of 1%. As schools and universities reopened and the weather began to cool, that rate ticked above 1% — and stayed there for about a month, rarely falling below that threshold and never spiking as high as 2%.

But on Tuesday, the state reported that its daily positivity rate had jumped up to 2.4% — after 320 COVID-19 cases were identified out of a total of 13,398 tests.

The state also reported an increase of 17 hospitalizations, for a total of 172 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. Connecticut hasn’t seen that many coronavirus patients hospitalized at once since June 19.

The state has still only reported one day with a positivity rate above 2% — meaning there is not yet enough data to label that increase a trend.

As of Tuesday, the state’s seven-day average positivity rate was about 1.5%, well below the single-day figure of 2.4%.

The state’s positivity rate is also still low in comparison to some other states — such as Idaho, which has recently reported a positivity rate above 20%.

However, Tuesday’s rate is

high for Connecticut, and it comes as the state wades through a general uptick in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

Dr. Albert Ko, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, who joined Lamont’s press briefing, said that the state’s current situation isn’t necessarily surprising.

“This isn’t unexpected,” Ko said. “We know that as we’re gradually reopening society, as we’re seeing more contacts, that we’re going to have higher rates than we experienced over the summer.”

The state’s increasing numbers have been driven by particular clusters of cases in municipalities such as Danbury, New London and Norwich. Ko said those outbreaks don’t indicate that the entire state is headed toward another surge of COVID-19, such as Connecticut endured in the spring.

“This next wave is hopefully not going to be the wildfire that we went through in March and April,” Ko said. “But we’re going to have more of these brush-fires like we’re seeing in Eastern Connecticut or in Danbury.”

State and local leaders have blamed the most recent spikes on relatively small social gatherings, citing examples of family and friends gathering together and feeling comfortable enough to remove their masks and stop socially distancing.

Those comments echo statements made last week by Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, during a stop in Hartford.

“This is really a message to everyone in Connecticut: the kind of spread that we’re seeing now is very different from the spread we experienced in March and April,” Birx said at the time.

Also on Tuesday, the state reported one additional coronavirus-related death. In total, 4,533 people have died from COVID-19 in Connecticut since March, and 61,697 people have contracted the virus.

Across the country, more than 7.8 million people have contracted the virus and 215,549 have died, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.