CT’s COVID-19 positivity tops 11%

COVID metrics continue to rise in Connecticut as the state reported Monday a seven-day positivity rate in excess of 11 percent and nearly 50 more hospitalizations in the past week.

The state on Monday reported an additional 8,476 COVID cases had been identified over the last seven days out of 75,030 reported tests for a positivity rate of 11.3 percent.

COVID case and positivity rates have been steadily, if slowly, increasing in Connecticut in recent weeks.

Hospitalizations have also been on the rise, though at a slower rate than during previous COVID spikes. On Monday, the state said 46 more patients had been fighting a COVID infection in Connecticut hospitals, a total of 276.

Tom Balcezak, medical director at Yale New Haven Hospital, said last week that though there are patients in need of hospitalization, their infections are not as severe.

“The disease symptomatology and the disease course is much, much more mild,” he said. “We're definitely seeing that in our institutions, and the positivity rate across the state of Connecticut is not translating into the number of hospitalizations that we've seen in the past.”

Though the state said Monday that 32.61 percent of all hospitalized patients have not been fully vaccinated, Balcezak credited the vaccines for lighter infections.

“The number of cases we are seeing in our hospitals is just not translating into the number of ICU patients or ventilated patients that happened during the first one or two waves of COVID,” Balcezak said. “That's because as our population becomes more highly vaccinated, those few people who develop disease that are vaccinated become hospitalized, it's very rare that they need to be put in the ICU or ventilated.”