The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Gov. Lamont declares public health emergency
HARTFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont declared civil preparedness and public health emergencies Tuesday, a move that gives him broad authority to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak and, he said, will increase the state’s capacity to test people for the virus.
The declaration will give Lamont authority to enact travel bans and close schools, public facilities and private industries. If he chooses to use those powers, he’ll do so in future executive orders; he did not suspend or modify any statutes in the initial declaration.
“We’ve made our strong recommendations in terms of travel, we’ve made our strong recommendations in terms of big group activities,” Lamont said. “Right now, it’s a strong recommendation, we haven’t legally restricted people’s travel,” he said, and municipalities can still make their own decisions.
In the declaration, he said powers to order isolation and quarantine have been delegated to municipal and district directors of public health.
During a mid-afternoon news conference in the state armory, Josh Geballe, Lamont’s operations chief, said that the second confirmed Connecticut resident with the virus is a health care worker at Bridgeport Hospital in her 60s from the town of
Bethlehem. She is believed to have contracted the virus on a recent trip to Nevada, and is not connected to the doctor from New York who sees patients at the hospital and tested positive this weekend.
Her children and grandchildren are in self-quarantine, and do not appear to have symptoms. Still, a private daycare facility has been closed and all schools in Region 14 in Bethlehem and Woodbury will close from March 11 to March 15 for cleaning. It’s still under investigation how many patients she interacted with at Bridgeport Hospital, Geballe said.
More testing sooner
The emergency declaration “gives us the opportunity to get more testing capacity faster,” Lamont said. “I’m going to look at the public health regulations and do everything I can to allow more of our local partners here in the state of Connecticut to be better able to do not just collection but testing. That’s the choke point right now.”
Renée Coleman-Mitchell, the state health commissioner, said 56 patients have been tested, with 19 more patients “in the queue” Tuesday. Two state lab workers are currently qualified to do the testing, and can complete up to 20 people per day, she said. Seven more employees are being trained, which will allow the lab to test 50 to 60 people per day.
At least four hospitals will be able to complete tests on site after approvals, including Greenwich Hospital.
“Alternate collection sites,” where swabs can be collected for testing in tents or mobile units, are being established at 10 hospitals, Geballe said. Those locations will “enable us to significant increase the volume of samples that we’re collecting, without having to drive those people into our emergency departments,” he said.
The state is working with at least two private commercial providers that have launched testing, he said. Officials have also requested two additional testing kits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coleman-Mitchell said. The state has received two kits already, which can each test 600 patients.
With higher testing volume, “all the public health office are confident that what that will show us is a lot of additional positive tests,” Geballe said.
Price controls to prevent gouging
The emergency declaration may help people benefit from travel insurance if their plans have been affected by the crisis, Lamont’s office said in a press release. It also triggers a state law “prohibiting profiteering during emergencies.”
“After the governor has declared an emergency, it is illegal to raise the price on any good sold at retail to any price that is not justified by the usual course of business or normal market factors,” Attorney General William Tong said. He has received reports of price-gouging on hand sanitizer and masks, he said.
On Monday, Lamont ordered all out-of-state travel by state employees curtailed and all state agency gatherings of more than 100 people canceled, with exceptions approved individually. He urged citizens and companies to follow similar procedures.
By Tuesday, the Connecticut high school sports authorities canceled tournament games for basketball and other winter sports.
Quinnipiac University announced Tuesday that starting March 18, all classes will be held online instead of in-person for the rest of the spring semester, and students can choose not to return to campus. Sacred Heart and University of New Haven have moved to virtual classes until later this month, and the University of Connecticut told faculty and students Tuesday to prepare for a possible move to online-only classes starting March 23, after spring break.
Vice President Joe Biden was expected to hold a rally in Connecticut next week, and that apparently is being affected by the coronavirus emergency. “We’re going to scale the size of this so it’s absolutely appropriate,” said Lamont, a strong Biden supporter who said last week he was working to bring the Democratic presidential frontrunner to the state.
When asked whether that meant limiting the event to fewer than 100 people, Lamont said, “something like that.”
In New York, the National Guard was mobilized Tuesday afternoon to a “containment zone” in New Rochelle. Maj. Gen. Francis Evon, the adjutant general of the Connecticut National Guard, did not outline any specific plans in the event of a cluster outbreak in the state, but said, “we are aggressively being proactive to prepare for the worst-case scenario.”