Experts say delta will wane

Meanwhile, state’s mask chaos continues

Connecticut’s latest COVID-19 surge likely will dissipate by the end of September, around the time Gov. Ned Lamont’s emergency powers expire, public health experts anticipate.

Until then, the more Connecticut

residents who wear face masks against the virulent delta strain of COVID, the safer the state will be. But implementing the public policy at a time of polarization is complicated.

Dr. Albert Ko, professor of public health and professor of epidemiology and medicine at the

Yale School of Public Health, said Wednesday that face masks are definitely needed everywhere, but he acknowledged the political atmosphere, the portion of the state that is vaccine-hesitant and the challenges to get people to start wearing masks again.

“Do we need masks? I think the short answer is that yes, we need to use face masks during this period,” Ko said. “This is a variant that is twice as transmissible as the strains we encountered here in Connecticut at the start of the pandemic.” He praised Connecticut’s overall vaccination rate, but warned that vaccines alone may not reduce the delta variant’s spread.

Ko, who stressed that he was not speaking as a member of Lamont’s advisory team of physicians, said masks are at least somewhat able to decrease transmission. While he said that the state is likely to come down from the latest surge by the end of

September, how fast is an open question, at this point.

“I think generally in this state this is a period where we are going up on the curve and we want to implement measures to reduce transmission,” Ko said. “This is going to be an endemic disease. While we’re in much better shape than the southern United States, there won’t be a magic point where transmission stops. In short, we’re not going to eradicate this disease, but as we come off the delta wave we have now, in early September or late September, then I think we will come off the need for masks.”

Connecticut and the Northeast have generally followed weeks behind the experience of European nations in battling the virus. Infections there recently decreased in countries including The Netherlands.

“We know that COVID doesn’t respect borders,” Ko said, taking the example of Fairfield’s proximity, just to the west of Bridgeport, with many people crossing the border, each way, to shop and work. Ko credited Lamont with flexibility and messaging since March of 2020, when the state shut down as the virus first ravaged the state. He believes there is a need for balance, which Lamont has done generally, he said.

Dr. Ajay Kumar, chief clinical officer for Hartford HealthCare, agrees that COVID cases will decrease as we move into the fall. “How much of a decline is hard to predict,” he said during a phone interview Wednesday night. “We have a large population of unvaccinated people in Connecticut, including children. I have a concern that the percentage of children eligible for vaccination is not that high.”

Kumar and Ko agreed that the disease will not go away entirely.

“When the delta variant, which is highly contagious, comes along it is going to find people who are ready for a disease. These are unvaccinated people,” Kumar said to reporters during a conference call on Wednesday afternoon. “So this disease will continue to be with us for some time, not at the highest level, of what we saw in the first or second surge.”

There are mixed reviews among local officials on whether the governor’s latest order, allowing leaders of towns and cities to make their own rules on wearing face masks in public, should again become a statewide mandate.

Connecticut is a small state with suburbanites regularly coming into the big cities of Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk and Stamford, where mandatory masking has recently been ordered by those mayors. But some residents of smaller towns and suburbs are conflicted, particularly in communities with high vaccination rates.

Some, like Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti and Fairfield First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick, all Republicans, are leaving it to local residents and businesses to decide on wearing masks.

“I am OK with the discretion,” Lauretti said. “I don’t think we need a statewide mask mandate. We have been browbeaten for the last year and a half. The notion that the governor is going to solve everything is just a notion. We have to learn to live with this. We have all adapted especially at the government level.”

Lauretti said the hospitalization and death rates have been his focus. “We are fortunate. Our numbers are low,” Lauretti said in a Wednesday phone interview. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all. Cities without the resources are affected greater than we are here.”

“I prefer that we make our

own rules,” Kupchick said Wednesday. “Our vaccination rate is pretty high, so there’s no reason to make a mandate. When I go to the grocery store and the CVS, everyone has a mask.”

“I think it’s a good idea to let the local officials make decisions,” said Cassetti, noting that while his city’s 53-percent overall vaccination rate is low, about 85 percent of older residents have been inoculated, and he is scheduling regular, free vaccination clinics. “I am not mandating masks at this time. I do wear a mask. It depends on an individual and their beliefs,” he said. Cassetti, like Kupchick, expects the virus to lose its tenacity by September or October.

But state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg of Westport, co-chairman of the legislative Public Health Committee, wants Lamont to re-enact the statewide mandate of last year.

“With three counties already reaching high-incidence levels, I’d imagine it’s only a matter of days before remaining counties approach that threshold,” Steinberg said Wednesday. “It seems inevitable that we’ll need to resort to a statewide mask mandate, given the extreme transmissibility of the delta variant. Most importantly, I hope the governor will quickly impose a mask mandate in schools and not delegate that decision to local districts.”

Steinberg, the Democratic candidate for first selectman in Westport, said that the higher statewide testing positivity rate of around 3 percent is a clear warning to mask-up again. “Why would we expect to get things dramatically better?” he said in a phone interview. “It doesn’t seem to be consistent with what we’ve learned over the last year and a half.”

He stressed that schools in particular need clarity on a statewide masking rule for the upcoming academic year.

The state Department of Public Health on Wednesday announced 11 additional hospitalizations, bringing the total patients statewide to 230. The agency reported 914 new positive tests for COVID out of a total of 29,007 daily tests. The seven-day positivity rate was 3.18 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday recommended vaccines for pregnant women.

“I don’t think very highly of the governor’s decision,” said Bethel First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker, a Democrat. He is reminded by the early days of the pandemic, in February of 2020, when various towns and cities came up with local policies, with some communities more stringent that others in varied attempts to stave off the virus.

“Leaving it up to the local officials was really quickly turning into a fiasco,” Knickerbocker said in a phone interview. “To the governor’s credit, he started issuing universal executive orders and standardized the response. It’s not that we can’t take the heat, but a patchwork of policies does not serve us very well. Leaving it up to us is a punt.”

Gayle Alberda, assistant professor of politics at Fairfield University, said the pandemic is a political tightrope for state and local officials alike. Acknowledging that Lamont’s emergency powers are set to expire on Sept. 30, Alberda said the shift to local rules restores some autonomy that a year ago, municipal leaders did not have as the coronavirus raged.

“Politically it makes sense,” Alberda said in a phone interview. “There is strong local authority in the 169 towns, but 169 different decisions makes it tough. Lamont still looks like he’s in charge, but he’s sharing power at the same time. Of course, the virus doesn’t stop at town boundaries, not does it care what

party you are affiliated with. Gov. Lamont has got to balance governance while keeping up his approval ratings to balance against any sort of Republican challenger. There has been criticism that he has kept his executive power too long.”

Max Reiss, communications director for Lamont, said Wednesday that the governor’s pandemic response has evolved over the 17 months. “We continue to look at the trends,” Reiss said. “We continue to consult our public health experts. The big difference between today and a year ago is that we have one of the highest vaccine rates in the country. The higher the rate of vaccination, the better it is for the entire state. As far as the politics goes, the state of Connecticut has been successful by taking a lot of politics out of discussion.”

But Dr. Ellen Fraint, a pediatric oncologist from Stratford, was discouraged when her Wednesday morning call to Lamont’s office, asking for him to order statewide mask-wearing, was finally picked up after many minutes on hold.

“My patients are at significant risk, because by and large they are not old enough to receive the vaccine,” Fraint said in a phone interview. “Even for those old enough to take the vaccines, they are not effective. There are unprotected children and it really breaks your heart. Thousands are not old enough to receive the vaccine.”

She opposes giving average citizens and local officials, discretion. “People are not going to wear masks unless you mandate it,” Frant said. “The state of Connecticut, refusing to issue a mask mandate, isn’t helping anyone. We’re gambling with people’s lives.”