CT’s COVID positivity rate hits 14.98%, hospitalizations climb

The positivity rate of COVID-19 tests hit a new high point Tuesday of 14.98 percent as a winter surge of infections gained additional strength through the recent holiday.

According to data released Tuesday, 5,753 COVID-19 cases were found among 38,395 new COVID-19 tests, for a rate of 14.98 percent, about four percentage points higher than the previous record set since the state launched broad testing efforts.

The climbing daily positivity rate has driven the seven-day average to roughly 10.8 percent, the highest measure since widespread testing began.

Hospitalizations, which state leaders said they are closely watching, edged closer to highs seen last winter when the state recorded a net increase of 38 patients for a total of 963 statewide.

The surge in infections comes as the state nears a grim milestone, 500,000 positive COVID-19 tests. If the trend in new cases persists, Connecticut will hit 500,000 total coronavirus infections this week.

The first case of coronavirus in a Connecticut resident was announced March 8, 2020. On Tuesday, the state had logged 494,964 positive COVID-19 tests since the start of the pandemic.

“We at some point may all be exposed,” said Dr. Scott Roberts, associate director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health, though if one has to eventually get COVID it’s better to delay that infection as long as possible.

“There’s a time and a place to get COVID. For me, I would rather get COVID in June, July, August, when the numbers really go down in the summertime.”

Hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been steadily increasing along with overall infections, which stretches available resources.

“Right now, when hospitals are being overwhelmed, we can’t keep up with testing, we can’t keep up with treatments,” Roberts said. “So if I were to get COVID, I would rather get it at a time when there’s not much COVID around.”

Nathan Grubaugh, who runs the Yale lab that does the majority of genetic testing on coronavirus samples, said Tuesday on Twitter that as many as 84 percent of tested samples from Yale New Haven Hospital may be the omicron variant.

“I think that we are just beginning to see the full effects of the omicron surge. It’s hard to predict how long it will last, but I think that the worst is still to come,” he said.

While the state nears 500,000 confirmed cases, 2.5 million residents have been fully vaccinated, more than 70 percent of the state population. But Roberts said the more infectious omicron variant is forcing researchers to redefine population or herd immunity.

Theoretically, when enough people in a given population have become immune to a pathogen, either through vaccination or contracting and surviving the disease, spread of that pathogen will slow or stop completely.

“The old definition of herd immunity, we probably cannot use in the old fashion we used to, where 80 percent of the population is infected and we can feel safe that there's enough immunity out there where we can really start scaling back a lot of these restrictions,” Roberts said.

But the emergence of new, more infectious variants and waning immunity have made population immunity an unlikely, if not impossible, goal. Wu said that “with omicron,” herd immunity “is basically non-existent.”

“We're seeing that with omicron, a prior infection is not necessarily 100 percent protective against a future infection. A lot of that is because some people have been infected almost two years ago, and they just don’t have that immunity,” Roberts said. “It’s really reset the stage and reset the game in terms of how we think about herd immunity. It’s been pretty humbling.”

Wu said he’s never put much stock in the idea of population immunity for COVID.

“I personally have never really bought the concept of herd immunity for this disease,” he said. “We have the four circulating coronaviruses that have always caused the common cold. We don’t develop herd immunity for that.”