The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Lamont orders return to Phase 2
Move takes effect Friday in response to increase in state coronavirus cases
With COVID-19 cases surging, Gov. Ned Lamont reversed the state’s reopening Monday, limiting restaurants to 50 percent capacity and no more than eight people at a table, while also ordering them to close their dining areas by 9:30 p.m.
Lamont also ordered outdoor social events to return to 50 people from the 150 that had been in place in Phase 3. And he said indoor, professionally catered events at restaurants and banquet halls would be limited to 25 people; that number had risen to 100 in Phase 3.
The orders — effective at 12:01 a.m. Friday — come as weekend testing revealed 2,651 new cases, a positivity rate of 3.4 percent and 11 more deaths — continuing the steady climb of coronavirus in recent weeks. Hospitalizations in the state have also rose by 11 between Friday and Monday, to 340, more than tripling in the last month.
During Monday’s news conference, Lamont said keeping hospitalizations down continues to be a key goal in the state.
“We’ve seen those hospitalization numbers can change very quickly,” he said. “In order to flatten the curve, we’re going to focus today on how we stay ahead of the curve.”
Although the orders take effect Friday morning, the administration clarified late Monday that events previously scheduled for this weekend would be allowed to proceed as planned. The orders will take full effect on Nov. 9.
Hair and nail salons are allowed to remain at 75 percent capacity. Lamont asked businesses to order employees to work from home wherever possible, but he stopped short of returning to a lockdown.
Restaurants and caterers have worked hard to follow the rules and prevent the spread of infections, Lamont and other state officials said, but scaling back is necessary to keep the broader economy open and to keep students in the classrooms.
“I know how tough this has been for them, but right now, it’s just considered too risky ... if you have a 5 percent positivity rate and 100 people are in a restaurant, there’s a good chance that five people in there are infected,” Lamont said.
The Connecticut Restaurant Association issued a statement in response to the changes, saying the governor’s orders represented “a renewed challenge to Connecticut restaurants, an industry that was hit sooner and hit harder by this pandemic than nearly any other.”
The statement commended the governor for acknowledging the recent bump in COVID cases is not being driven by restaurants.
“We hope he and his administration will keep this fact in mind during the weeks and months ahead as we continue working with them to help local restaurants make it through this winter and through this pandemic,” the statement said.
The association said its main hope is the governor will adjust the new rules to allow restaurants to operate later than 9:30 p.m.
“In making today’s announcement, the governor noted that other states are using a similar closing time, but failed to mention that those states also have
small business grant programs that dwarf what Connecticut is currently offering,” the statement read. “Given the nature of our businesses, putting a hard stop on their ability to serve customers after 9:30 p.m. and not offering new options for grants or forgivable loans will be the final straw for many Connecticut small businesses already just barely keeping their doors open.”
Under the order, restaurants not only can’t serve customers after 9:30 p.m. — they must close their dining and bar areas at that time. Bars that do not serve meals, and night clubs, remained closed under Phase 3 and that will not change under the new orders.
“We realize this is a blunt instrument, but we think this addresses some of the concerns that the governor mentioned,” said David Lehman, commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development. “It’s necessary to prevent a further shutdown of the economy.”
For the last seven days, Connecticut has seen 5,759 new cases, or 23 per day per 100,000 residents. That is well above the red-alert level of 15 cases per day per 100,000. It’s slightly below the U.S. rate of 25 cases, but comparing states is difficult especially as Connecticut has one of the highest testing rates in the nation.
The state’s rate of positive test results is at 3.6 percent over the last seven days, compared with a national rate of 6.6 percent.
The 11 new deaths brought the Connecticut total to 4,627 fatalities since the first death was reported on March 17.
Dr. Ajay Kumar, Hartford HealthCare’s chief medical officer, said his health system has 103 patients hospitalized with COVID — a sharp jump from Saturday, when there were only 90. However, Kumar pointed out, the hospital system had just seen a big drop between Friday — when there were 102 patients — and Saturday.
As the cases and hospitalizations have increased rapidly in some municipalities, places like Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford and Norwalk have already started to roll back capacity at restaurants, churches and other gatherings. The 9:30 p.m. closing time and the eight-person table limit, however, are new orders that municipalities had not been allowed to require.
“After a certain hour, we learned from a lot of our towns and municipal partners that enforcement was getting harder,” Lamont said, adding that the new rollback reflected rising case numbers across the state, not violations by restaurants.
As for school and club sports, Lamont said, “We’ll have some guidance on that over the next couple of days.”