State sees hopeful signs on COVID

New cases and hospitalizations down, though new rise could come in late October

New COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions for the virus are trending downward, state data shows, suggesting Connecticut may be beginning to turn the corner on the latest wave driven by the delta variant.

As of Thursday, the seven-day average of new cases statewide fell below 500, and the hospital patient census has dropped by more than a quarter over the last two weeks, state data shows. The seven-day positivity rate has also fallen to 2 percent, down from around 3 percent just weeks ago.

Nationally, cases have also begun to decline, with the seven-day moving average of new cases falling 13 percent in the last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We turned the corner as we predicted,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare. “But with the weather getting colder ... it’s really nice now, but by late October, I would expect those numbers to start rising again, unfortunately.”

That rise likely won’t be to the extent of last winter, Wu said, when the state went through a longer surge of cases than when the virus first arrived in spring 2020.

“I think herd immunity and immunizations are going to help that, but I do think that it will rise,” he said. Most of that will be due to people spending more time indoors during the colder months.

“Most predictive models are saying it’s not going to (rise). I disagree with it and I hope I’m wrong,” Wu added.

On Friday, the state announced a daily positivity rate of 2.16 percent and a net increase of three hospitalizations, bringing the statewide total to 237.

Connecticut’s downward trend comes as cases of the highly infectious delta variant comprise all positive cases tested through genetic sequencing in the past week, the state data shows.

The decline in cases comes despite little new enthusiasm for vaccines. For months, the state has struggled to administer more than around 50,000 doses each week, down from a peak of well over 300,000 weekly doses in April.

As of Thursday, just over 76 percent of all Connecticut residents have received their first dose of vaccine, CDC data shows, while a little under 69 percent are now fully vaccinated.

The state’s biweekly report on breakthrough infections shows 2,506 more individuals who have been fully vaccinated have tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks, bringing the state’s known total to 13,685. Of those, 112 have died, including 29 in the past two weeks.

Deaths from breakthrough infection comprise 10 percent of the state’s total since February, according to the data. But the data shows more than 64 percent of infections in the previous seven days were among people who were unvaccinated. As of Tuesday, nearly three-quarters of patients hospitalized for the illness in the state were not vaccinated, according to Gov. Ned Lamont’s office.

Wu said breakthrough cases only include around a quarter of hospitalized patients.

“If it’s keeping people out of the hospital, that’s a good thing,” he said.

Lamont is requiring Connecticut’s executive branch employees, teachers, child care and nursing home workers to be vaccinated. Many state workers were allowed to test weekly instead of receiving the vaccine.

On Thursday, Lamont’s office said he was directing executive branch agencies to prepare for employees to be placed on unpaid leave starting next week if they don’t comply with the order. Workers have until Monday night to show they’ve been vaccinated or are complying with the weekly testing.

As of Thursday afternoon, 63 percent of state workers were fully vaccinated, 12 percent have started weekly testing and around 25 percent are noncompliant, according to the governor’s office. That means 20,000 state workers are fully vaccinated, nearly 4,000 are undergoing testing, and over 8,000 have not yet complied with either mandate. Lamont’s office said the number of noncompliant employees has dropped by over 2,000 in the past few days.

The governor directed the state’s National Guard to prepared to deploy “until replacement employees can be hired or noncompliant employees come into compliance,” the governor’s office said.

“I continue to remain optimistic that our employees will submit their testing and vaccination information quickly,” Lamont said in a statement. “But as we have done throughout the pandemic, we will prepare for the worst to prevent impacts to the critical services the state provides.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has delivered a similar ultimatum to her state’s health care workers, also saying she would deploy medically trained members of the National Guard if the mandate led to staffing shortages. That move appears to have worked, with thousands getting vaccinated at the last minute, The New York Times reported.

Despite Connecticut’s relatively high vaccination rate among states — ranking fourth in the nation based on first-dose coverage among total population — some areas still have low vaccination rates. For many towns in eastern Connecticut, less than 60 percent of residents have received a first dose, while some municipalities report less than half of residents have begun vaccination. Major cities, including Bridgeport, Hartford and Waterbury, report less than 60 percent of residents have been vaccinated.

Residents of traditionally underserved neighborhoods prioritized by the state for vaccination are less likely to have been vaccinated, the data shows. About 61 percent of residents of 50 ZIP codes that were prioritized by the state have received a first dose, compared with about 70 percent of residents living outside those neighborhoods, the data shows.