Lamont to let cities, towns roll back Phase 3 reopening.
Local public officials in COVID-19 hot spots would have the discretion to roll back their Phase 3 reopenings under new rules Gov. Ned Lamont is planning to roll out.
On the day when Connecticut restaurants, personal-care businesses and outdoor event venues were allowed to expand their capacities under Phase 3, Lamont said Thursday that coronavirus flare-ups in New London, Norwich, Windham and Preston are persuading him to make the change.
From the start of the coronavirus crisis, Lamont has insisted on a one-size-fits-all philosophy across Connecticut for closing and reopening businesses, social and religious events. That’s because it’s a small state, he has said repeatedly.
The governor said he has been asked by some officials for the flexibility to retain Phase 2 capacity levels, which include keeping indoor restaurant attendance, hair salons and libraries at 50 percent of capacity.
How and even whether the local discretion unfolds has yet to be decided, Lamont said during his daily news briefing from the state Capitol. If the policy does go forward, he said, there would be no formal reporting requirement in the added attempt to cut rising infection rates.
Adecision will be made by early next week, Lamont said. “We’re trying to fine tune, exactly, the reopening strategy at some of these locations,” he said. “Enforcement is going to be really important over the course of the next couple of months.”
“We’re thinking about this on a town-by-town basis,” Lamont said, stressing that in April, May and June, the importance of closing non-essential businesses statewide.
Asked why he’s now willing to drop the one-size-fitsall approach, Lamont downplayed the change. He likened it to local school boards deciding how to pursue public education — inschool, remote, or a hybrid.
State health officials on Thursday declared a stepped-up COVID-19 emergency in the New London area, responding to a coronavirus flare-up that will bring increased testing and other resources there, like it did last week to nearby Norwich, and in recent weeks to Danbury.
The DPH reports that New London has had a total of 353 cases and five deaths. Between September 20 and October 3, the city saw 115 new COVID-19 cases, to raise the daily case rate to 30.5 per 100,000 population, one of the highest in the state. A similar alert was issued for Norwich last week.
The statewide weekly positivity rate remains at 1.4 percent, far below the 4.7 percent national rate. There were five new fatalities reported Thursday, for a statewide total of 4,527 deaths in the pandemic. There was a net reduction of 10 in-patients, for a total of 128 hospitalizations.
Lamont noted that the vast majority of the state has low infection rates, with occasional outliers such as Fairfield, where Sacred Heart University and Fairfield University students have been the recent sources of spread.
Unlike the recent Danbury outbreak, which was mostly in one neighborhood, the Norwich and New London upticks were scattered throughout the cities, indicating it was small, informal groups that spread the virus, Acting Commissioner of Public Health Deidre Gifford said.
“Each one of these outbreaks looks a little bit different,” Gifford said. “We are seeing that some of the increases are localized and we’re not seeing a generalized uptick in cases throughout the state. There is some logic to having a more localized approach to some of the changes in the [reopening] phases, particularly some of those that might entail a little more risk indoors, without masks, et cetera. So that’s the kind of discretion the governor is talking about.”
Lamont unveiled a new map showing the 14-day percent increase in cases in each town, showing that New London and Windham counties have most of the highest levels since Sept. 24. The state will update that map every two weeks, he said.
While the southeastern region was the last part of the state to see the initial spring surge, it has joined Danbury, which in August became a focus of state health officials who clamped down on public activities, including outdoor sports. The Department of Public Health’s rapid-response team was prompted to act by higher rates of positive tests.