The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Infant COVID-19 infections double in Danbury
Dozens of young children also infected
DANBURY — The number of Danbury infants who have tested positive for the coronavirus has doubled in recent weeks, and more than two dozen young children have been infected as well.
Four cases have been reported among Danbury infants since Aug. 12. Before that, only four infant cases were reported in Danbury throughout the pandemic, said Kara Prunty, acting health director.
She called the increase “concerning.”
“They’re all from different households and it’s from family spread,” Prunty said at a school board meeting Wednesday evening. “This is something we’re really looking at, looking into and monitoring. We’re trying to do targeted outreach. We’re trying to increase testing and really take some strong mitigation strategies so that we can control the spread, understand where we need to target our outreach and move on from there.”
Danbury is seeing a spike in new COVID-19 cases, with an infection rate of about 7 percent, compared to less than 1 percent for the state.
The city’s positivity rate in July had been just over 1 percent, with 83 cases last month and between roughly 260 to 270 cases this month, Prunty said.
The city has ramped up testing in response, with well over 2,000 tests were conducted between Saturday to Wednesday, she said.
Of the 10 new cases on Thursday, about half were from children under 16, which Mayor Mark Boughton called “troubling.”
“There’s a little bit of a spread going on amongst our young people, so we need to do better convincing those folks to wear their masks and things like that,” he said during his Facebook Live on Thursday evening. “While it won’t hurt them, 99 percent of the time they won’t end up in the hospital, they bring it home to multi-generational housing or multi-family housing and they end up infecting the entire residence.”
The 9-and-under age group has seen one of the largest increases in new cases this month, Prunty said.
Prunty displayed a graph that showed nearly 30 Danbury children in that age group tested positive between Aug. 1 to Aug. 24, compared to about five in July and nearly 10 in June.
Cases for children 10 to 15 and 16 to 20 hover around 15 so far in August, compared to around five in July. Around 10 cases were reported in June for children 10 to 15, while there were more than 15 cases among those 16 to 20 that month.
It was statistics like these that led medical professionals to recommend the school district start the year on distance learning, rather than the hybrid model that was initially planned.
“As disappointing as this is for everyone, this is a very serious virus,” said Kathy O’Dowd, the health and nursing services coordinator for the district. “It is very easily spread and we have to take into account health and safety (as) No. 1.”
Danbury’s seven-day rolling average of new cases when standardized for 100,000 people is 22.7, Prunty said.
The state requires districts to go into distance learning if their county hits a certain threshold, and Danbury’s rolling average bumps up against that figure, she said.
Children may not get as sick as adults, but still spread the virus, said Dr. William Begg, the city’s medical adviser, who said his uncle died due to COVID-19, while his grandmother nearly died from it.
“They (children) pass it on to people like my grandma, and my uncle, and your mom, and dad, and maybe your spouse, and you’re the ones that will get it,” he said.
Strategies like checking students’ temperatures before they go to school would not work because the virus can spread without the child having a fever, Begg said.
The 30-to-39 age group has the highest number of positive cases, with more than 60 so far in August, just over 20 in July and almost 30 in June, according to the city health department’s data.
The 21-to-29 age group had more than 50 cases from Aug. 1-24, compared to about 15 in July and around 30 in June.
For the past three months, case numbers have been lowest among those over 60, who are among those most at risk for serious complications from the virus.
The plan is to analyze the data on Oct. 1 to see whether the school district could go into distance learning.
“This is the least disruptive and the safest (way) to begin the year with the hope ... to get back to inperson learning,” Superintendent Sal Pascarella said.