Positivity rate spikes again, reaching highest level in more than two months
Connecticut’s COVID-19 positivity rate jumped again Tuesday, reaching its highest level in more than two months.
The state’s numbers have trended upward in recent weeks, likely due to presence of the highly contagious Delta variant, which researchers say makes up more than 60% of Connecticut’s cases.
Gov. Ned Lamont said Tuesday he will decide soon whether to require children to wear masks in school this fall, depending on the state’s COVID-19 numbers. The governor said he does not plan to restore Connecticut’s broader mask mandate or to implement further restrictions as cases increase. “I don’t think we need a lot of new mandates now,” he said.
Cases and positivity rate
The state reported 218 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday out of 8,055 tests, for a positivity rate of 2.7% — highest on any day since May 11. The state’s seven-day positivity rate now stands at 1.5%, highest since May 12.
Officials have said Connecticut’s positivity rate tends to be somewhat higher on Tuesdays than on other days due to testing patterns.
Connecticut has averaged 151 cases per day over the past week, most in a seven-day span since late
In New York, Attorney General Letitia James announced an agreement with the three distributors that would deliver $1.1 billion to New York state, to go toward opioid addiction treatment, recovery and prevention efforts.
“For more than two decades, the opioid epidemic has wreaked havoc on countless communities throughout New York and across the rest of the nation, killing hundreds of thousands of our friends and family members and addicting millions more,” James said in a statement. “And over the course of these past two decades, Mckesson, Cardinal Health, and Amerisource Bergen distributed these opioids without regard to the national crisis they were helping to fuel.”
The potential $26 billion deal is one part of the complex litigation in which Connecticut is involved as it fights the companies at the heart of the opioid crisis. In another case, Connecticut declined to join an agreement reached by 15 states earlier this month regarding the bankruptcy reorganization plan of the Stamford-based painkiller maker Purdue Pharma.
Through the agreement, which remains subject to approval, a group of states including New York and Massachusetts would withdraw their opposition to Purdue Pharma’s plan in exchange for a release of 33 million documents and an additional $50 million from members of the Sackler family, which owns the company. The agreement would likely clear the way for a $4.5 billion settlement of thousands of cases related to the opioid crisis.
Tong has maintained that the potential resolution does not provide enough money or accountability for the ravages of the opioid crisis.
Tong and eight other attorneys general filed formal objections Monday to Purdue Pharma’s reorganization plan, which Tong said Connecticut would “continue to fight tooth and nail.”
Connecticut, Maryland and the District of Columbia wrote in their objection that Purdue Pharma was attempting to “cram down an unconfirmable plan that, among other things, would absolve non-debtor wrongdoers without an appropriate judicial reckoning of their actual liability, in exchange for the stretchedout payment of only a tiny fraction of the claims asserted against them, profits they received, and current wealth.”
“This is hard and it’s late,” Tong said Tuesday. “I don’t deny that it’s challenging when the majority of states are indicating their willingness to settle. But as I’ve said all along, a bad deal is so much worse than no deal.”
A hearing is set to begin Aug. 9, after which a judge is expected to decide whether or not to approve the bankruptcy plan.