100K confirmed COVID cases hit all ages in state
It’s been nearly eight months since Chris Tillett was in a medically induced coma for 10 days as he battled COVID-19 at Danbury Hospital.
The Wilton man was Connecticut’s first COVID-19 patient.
“It’s a shame,” he says, there have been more than 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the state.
As Connecticut surpassed the milestone Friday, Tillett, 45, said he considers himself lucky.
While he’s reminded of the disease each day with lingering effects such as energy lags and some muscle pain, he’s at least back to “80 to 85 percent of where I was before.”
Tillett has returned to work as a cybersecurity engineer and he and his wife, Elizabeth, plan to soon move with their twin toddlers to Virginia to be close to his parents.
Others, he points out, have not been as fortunate. As of Friday, 4,828 Connecticut residents have died with the virus — less than 200 from another grim milestone: 5,000 deaths.
‘It’s been awful’
Daniel Spano was among the youngest in the state to die with COVID-19. The 30-year-old personal trainer was described by his family as being in perfect health before falling ill and dying in April at Norwalk Hospital.
His family is preparing for its first holiday without him.
“Obviously, it’s been awful,” his sister, Melissa Castiglia, said. “There’s a giant hole in our family
and our lives. It’s my daughter’s first of everything and our first of everything without him.”
Castiglia, 32, a Ridgefield resident, said her brother’s death still hurts deeply and she is heartbroken that her daughter is growing up without her uncle.
Castiglia often thinks about how her only brother suffered in the hospital, hooked up to a ventilator and unable to see his family. “It’s traumatic, really,” she said. With more than 800 people now in Connecticut hospitals suffering from COVID,-19 Castiglia hopes more families won’t have to endure the same pain as hers.
“It’s something I don’t want anyone else to experience,” she said.
Castiglia’s grief is compounded by the frustration she feels when she sees others not taking the pandemic seriously.
“It doesn’t discriminate based on age or health,” she said.
As a Stamford teacher, she’s concerned about the school environment. Her school is in the hybrid model. For her, that means being in the classroom every day, while her students are there every other day.
“I’m very anxious and nervous about still being in school,” she said.
While Gov. Ned Lamont and others have said students are safe in school where they say there is a low transmission rate, Castiglia points to her 9-year-old nephew as an example of a child who contracted COVID-19 and was asymptomatic.
“It’s very concerning to me as a mother of a baby,” Castiglia said of working in the schools.
‘Why wait for something bad to happen?’
Jamar Greene, a sixth-grade English teacher at Cloonan Middle School in Stamford, shares Castiglia’s concerns.
“It’s a matter of time before it gets out of hand if we don’t do something,” Greene said. “If you have cancer, you don’t wait until it’s at Stage 4 to treat it.”
Greene, of Norwalk, is still grieving the death of the man who raised him since he was 2 years old.
Jack Bryant, 63, former president of the Stamford NAACP, died in April with COVID.
Greene, 43, said he always considered Bryant his dad. Losing Bryant was hard, Greene said, and it’s been followed by even more loss. Bryant’s sister, Louise, died shortly afterward “from a stroke, and, we believe, from being heartbroken and worrying about her brother,” Greene said.
Greene, head football coach at Stamford High School, applauded the governor for suspending youth sports until Jan. 19, but said more needs to be done to control the pandemic.
He feels Bryant, who was elected in November 2019 to the Stamford Board of Education, would have pushed for all schools to switch to distance learning right now.
“I believe (remote learning) is something he would have pushed for,” he said. “Why wait for something bad to happen? I think we should be in remote learning ASAP.”
Greene, who said he’s lost friends to the disease, said vaccines are positive signs, but curbing the spread of the illness starts with people changing their behaviors.
“We’ve got to stop going to the bars, stop going to parties,” he said. “We need to sacrifice those things for a month or two so we can enjoy them later.”