New Haven: Mask up inside
On Monday, it will become first city in state to set indoor rule
Masks will be required in bars, restaurants, theaters and offices in New Haven beginning Monday — regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status — as the state grapples with rising coronavirus infections due to the highly contagious delta variant.
The city is the first in the state to issue such a mandate after Gov. Ned Lamont opened the door Thursday evening to allowing cities and towns to take public health measures that are stricter than those imposed by the state.
“I’ve been quite clear that we’re going to use every tool that we can to make sure that we keep residents safe,” New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said at a news conference with Lamont in New Haven on Friday morning, hours before issuing an executive order on the matter. The city already had a mask mandate within municipal buildings.
Elicker has pushed before for stricter COVID-19 protocols than the ones issued by the state. In November, he unsuccessfully sought to shut down indoor dining as well as gyms, hair salons and barbershops in the city as the state headed into a fall surge of coronavirus cases.
Lamont has resisted a statewide mandate that all individuals — vaccinated or not — wear masks in indoor spaces. The state Department of Public Health has instead strongly recommended masks be worn in those instances. An existing executive order requires masks to be worn by unvaccinated individuals indoors and by all individuals in certain settings like trains, buses and doctor’s offices.
At the news conference with Elicker on Monday, Lamont said he believed it made sense to let local officials enact stricter COVID-19 protocols given the wide disparity in vaccination rates between towns.
“We have some towns that have 99% of their residents vaccinated and some towns that have less than 50%,” Lamont said. “I think mayors and first selectmen ought to have a little more discretion so they can have the
right tools to combat COVID given the particularities of their situation. If we have to do something more broadly, time will tell, but we’re not there yet.”
According to data
released Thursday, about 50% of New Haven residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
That compares to a statewide figure of 64% and rates that exceed 70% in towns like Glastonbury, Farmington and West Hartford. The small northwestern Connecticut town of Canaan
has the highest vaccination rate in the state with more than 94% of residents fully vaccinated.
“The state’s positivity rate has increased nearly five fold in the past three weeks,” New Haven Health Director Maritza Bond said in a written statement. “Nearly two-thirds
of eligible residents in New Haven are now vaccinated, but vaccination still lags among younger residents and we still have thousands of residents who fall below the 12-year-old eligibility threshold.”