Weekly positive test rate near 23%
Hartford Healthcare adding testing sites
Connecticut’s weekly COVID19 test positivity rate and number of hospitalizations due to the virus continued to rise on Friday, reaching their highest points since the early months of the pandemic.
“Not just in [Hartford Healthcare] but in the state we are seeing a rise in cases as well as hospitalizations, as well as ICU and ventilator utilization,” Dr. Ulysses Wu, an infectious disease specialist at Hartford Healthcare, said Friday. “We still hope that our prediction of the middle of January when all this will start to decrease holds true.”
The state’s weekly COVID19 test positivity rate increased slightly on Friday to 22.69%, a record high since widespread testing began more than 18 months ago. Even so, over the past week, the rate of change for the metric has begun to slow somewhat, signaling a potential flattening.
In a push to expand the state’s testing capacity as COVID-19 caseloads remain high, Hartford Healthcare is opening a few new testing sites, hospital officials announced Friday.
“As everyone is aware, testing has become essential and limited and we’re excited to be able to start opening up these additional sites,” said Jim Cardon, Hartford Healthcare’s chief clinical integration officer, during a press conference Friday.
In addition to the health system’s preexisting testing sites in Newington, New Britain and Torrington, a testing site opened at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport on
Friday. Two additional testing sites, at Backus Hospital in Norwich and Windham Hospital in Willimantic, will open Wednesday. All locations require appointments and do not accept walk-ins.
The additional sites will increase the health system’s testing capacity by roughly 1,000 tests per day, Cardon said.
The new sites are poised to help
offset the loss of testing sites run by SEMA4, the Stamford-based laboratory which supplies more than half of the state’s testing capacity and which is ending its contract with Connecticut at the end of the month.
Cases, positivity rate
Connecticut reported 10,076 new COVID-19 cases Friday out of 41,038 tests administered, for a daily positivity rate of 24.55%. The state’s seven-day positivity rate now stands at 22.69%, the highest of any time since widespread testing began more than 18 months ago.
All eight Connecticut counties — along with nearly the rest of the country — are currently recording “high” levels of COVID-19 transmission as defined by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With this level of transmission, the CDC advises people to wear a mask in public indoor settings.
Hospitalizations
As of Friday, Connecticut had 1,810 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, an increase of 26 individuals since Thursday and the most the state has seen since April 25, 2020.
According to the state, 67.3% of people hospitalized with COVID19 are not fully vaccinated. Hospital officials say the rate is significantly higher when considering only patients with severe symptoms.
Deaths
On Thursday, the state reported 121 coronavirus-linked deaths over the past week, the most in a seven-day period in nearly a year. Connecticut has now recorded 9,281 COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic. The state reports additional COVID-19 deaths once a week.
The United States has recorded a total of 834,146 COVID-19 deaths, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University.
Vaccinations
As of Friday, 89.6% of all Connecticut residents and 95% of those 12 and older had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, while 75% of all residents and 83.9% of those 12 and older were fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Additionally, about 44.5% of fully vaccinated Connecticut residents 18 or older have received a booster dose.
The CDC warns that booster shots are sometimes misclassified as first doses, likely inflating the reported number of first-dose coverage and understating the true number of people who have received boosters.