Lamont: CT schools to stay open
Governor reiterates position despite COVID numbers nearing 24% positivity rate for state
“If I have a message for you, it’s: 24 percent infection rate is lousy and it may get worse before it gets better. But we have the tools in place ... we have the tools to keep you going safe and keep going about your lives.” Gov. Ned Lamont
Gov. Ned Lamont and other top state officials on Tuesday voiced their unwavering commitment to in-person learning despite an unprecedented surge in COVID infections that have stressed the public school system.
This message from the Lamont administration comes on the fifth day of record positivity rates in Connecticut. According to the state data on Tuesday, 10,602 new COVID cases were found in 44,449 tests for a positivity rate of 23.85 percent, which is the highest since widespread testing started in the spring of 2020.
“If I have a message for you, it’s: 24 percent infection rate is lousy and it may get worse before it gets better. But we have the tools in place — provided you take advantage of the tools, the masks, the vaccinations and then the testing — we have the tools to keep you going safe and keep going about your lives,” Lamont said Tuesday during a press conference on how the state plans to keep schools open amid the surge.
COVID hospitalizations also jumped by a net of 110 patients for a total of 1,562 — the most May 1, 2020 when it was 1,590. Of those hospitalized on Tuesday, 32 percent — 500 patients — are fully vaccinated.
In light of these staggering statistics, Lamont, along with the state’s education and public health commissioners, attempted on Tuesday to instill confidence in parents and educators as they reiterated their commitment to in-person learning.
“You have to build confidence every day to give teachers, give parents the confidence we are doing everything we can to keep schools open safely,” Lamont said.
However, it’s not yet known on the state level how many students and staff members have missed school so far this week with COVID after the holiday break.
Staffing shortages have caused some schools to close, including in Ansonia, where classes are not expected to resume until at least next Monsince
day and the days will be made up at the end of the year.
However, Lamont said returning to broad remote learning is not an option and will not count toward the 180-day school calendar.
“I am going to do everything I can to keep kids in the classroom safely,” he said. “There’s nothing that compares to a great teacher in the classroom.”
While facing a tenuous situation as the daily COVID positivity rate rose to nearly 24 percent on Tuesday, officials said it remains critical to offer students the in-person learning experience they lost during the early months of the pandemic.
“We also know that schools provide critical supports, mental health supports, social emotional supports, nutrition … these supports have grown even more critical during the pandemic,” state Department of Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said.
The news conference, held on the second day since students returned from holiday break, focused on new state guidance meant to keep children out of school for fewer days if they contract COVID-19 or face a potential exposure.
The guidance, which the state Department of Public Health stressed on Monday was optional, offers much shorter quarantines for students with confirmed cases of COVID-19, and also eases isolation requirements for people with known exposures to the virus but no symptoms.
In most cases, students and staff with a confirmed case of COVID-19 would only need to quarantine for five days before returning to class on the sixth day, which mirrors a recent update to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance on the matter.
“If you are sick, stay home, get tested. If you have COVID-19, you at least know you must stay there for at least five days. If you don’t, you can return sooner if your symptoms resolve and you’re fever-free,” Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said.
DPH also suggested that school districts pivot away from contact tracing, given how widely COVID-19 is spreading now through communities.
“Because individual-level contact tracing is a tool that becomes less effective when community transmission levels are high, DPH recommends that schools begin to refocus the activities of health staff away from the investigation of relatively low risk in-school exposures and toward the identification, early isolation and clinical management of students and staff with active symptoms that could be related to COVID-19,” the department said in the guidance.
The guidance comes as Connecticut is experiencing some of the worst COVID-19 spread since the onset of the pandemic.
While both infections and hospitalizations have spiked in recent weeks, children have been among those impacted. Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital and Connecticut Children’s Medical Center have also reported increases in pediatric COVID hospitalizations in the past month.
With this rise in cases, a groundswell of new COVID-19 infections among the general population, and concerns of adequate support, the state’s teachers unions sent a unified message on Monday that more stringent safety measures are needed.
The unions requested measures such as more aggressive testing protocols, access to testing, N95 masks and vaccines, and prohibiting combining classes for staff shortages and dual teaching.
Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said Monday’s return to classes saw many student and teacher absences, along with limited access to N95 masks and COVID-19 testing.
“That wasn’t the agreement,” she said. “That doesn’t feel safe, it doesn’t feel cared for, it doesn’t feel responsible.”
State officials detailed on Tuesday how they are earmarking hundreds of thousands of at-home tests and N95 masks for school districts.
A total of 620,000 tests were being sent to schools, and an additional 50,000 were set aside for early child care facilities, according to the governor’s office. Deliveries and pickups of these tests started Tuesday morning.
Officials hope these deliveries can help bridge the gap before the federal government starts to provide test kits to residents across the country.
“We are still more committed than ever to keeping our schools open,” said Josh Geballe, Lamont’s chief operating officer.