New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Stefanowski, Klarides weigh in on Lamont’s COVID performance
If Bob Stefanowski had been governor of Connecticut in the spring of 2020 as a deadly, new virus was spreading fast, he would not have ordered a statewide mask mandate for indoor public spaces. Instead, he would have let local officials decide whether they wanted to impose such a rule.
In an interview, Stefanowksi, the Republican nominee for governor in 2018 who announced Wednesday he is running again , detailed how his handling of the pandemic would have differed from Gov. Ned Lamont’s — including in the early days when very little was known about COVID-19 and how it spreads.
As Lamont’s handling of the coronavirus crisis plays out in the campaign for governor in the November election, Stefanowski and fellow GOP governor hopeful Themis Klarides, the former state House GOP leader, responded to questions about how their actions would have differed.
Klarides, in a statement through a spokesman, said Lamont was slow to reopen the state in the spring of 2020, among other criticism. While her campaign’s statement didn’t refer to Lamont’s vaccine orders, Stefanowski said he would not have mandated the inoculation for state workers.
“First of all, you have to be sympathetic to Gov. Lamont. There was really no playbook for COVID,” Stefanowski said. “At the start, we thought it spread by touching desks and things like that and I do think he’s tried his best.”
Lamont has generally received high marks for his performance in the pandemic, especially after the initial surge, which took the lives of thousands of nursing home residents, and before the recent rise of the omicron variant. For most of the pandemic, Connecticut has had among the lowest infection rates and the highest vaccination rates in the country.
One of the governor’s “greatest mistakes,” Stefanowski said, was taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
“In general, I don’t like a statewide mandate on anything because I think don’t think a one-size-fits-all approach works,” he said. “These are intensely personal decisions.”
He added that it should have been up to town and city leaders who “know their communities best” to decide if they wanted to order their residents to wear masks. Nationwide, a total of 11 states have never had mask mandates during the pandemic, according to AARP.
Lamont’s argument against town-by-town rules early on was that the virus doesn’t respect borders and was spreading rapidly across this small state. He later, and still to this day, allowed local officials to issue their own mask mandates, or not, and has been criticized widely for not having a statewide rule for the public.
Masks are still required to be worn at schools, nursing homes, health care settings, on public transit and in state offices.
In the early weeks, the governor acted quickly and in coordination with governors from neighboring states to declare a state of emergency, impose stay-athome orders, and require residents to wear masks. Public health officials have long promoted the use of masks as one of the best ways to stop the spread of COVID — although some said masks were not needed for the general public as late as the week before the nationwide shutdown in mid-March, 2020.
In the fall of 2021, about five months after COVID vaccines became widely available, Lamont ordered state employees and health care workers to get inoculated; some were allowed to opt out by agreeing to weekly testing, depending on their jobs.
Lamont said in recent days that he will not seek an extension of that order. He had temporarily paused the testing requirement over the holidays given surge in demand and a shortage of tests.
Stefanowski said although he would not have imposed a vaccine mandate for workers, he is vaccinated and got a booster shot, and strongly encourages others to do the same.
“I wouldn’t mandate it but it sounds like we’re in agreement that the vaccine helps,” he said.
Another area where there’s agreement: keeping schools open. Lamont faced strong pushback from many teachers and parents for pushing for in-person school in the fall of 2020, and again following the recent holiday break for not allowing districts to temporarily go remote amid the omicron surge.
“My view is that we should not go remote but I do think it’s a local decision,” Stefanowski said, generally agreeing with the path Lamont took.
Stefanowksi said he’s heard from a lot of parents concerned about their kids falling behind given remote learning during the pandemic. He said the state should be thinking about what can be done to get these kids “back up to speed” including summer training and after school programs — efforts that the Lamont administration has initiated.
“There’s been a lot of press conferences and statements,” Stefanowksi said. “I’ve heard a lot of parents say the state hasn’t done enough to get my kid up to speed.”
A spokesman for Klarides, who announced her candidacy months ago but has not formed a committee enabling her to raise outside money, said she was not available for an interview to discuss how her handling of the pandemic would have differed from Lamont’s.
Instead, the spokesman, Sebastian Rougement, provided a written statement on her behalf, accusing the governor of taking a “sluggish approach” to reopening Connecticut’s economy and failing to prepare for a holiday demand for testing amid the omicron surge.
Among Northeast governors, Lamont was arguably one of the most aggressive in lifting the state’s restrictions in late May 2020, doing so before states such as New York, which along with New Jersey, rolled back its plans after an explosion of COVID-19 cases across the country. Lamont did not change course despite that surge.
Klarides also criticized Lamont for his administration’s recent guidance calling for nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients who are not undergoing acute care. The directive applies only to homes that have a way to keep infected patients segregated.
“That option should have never been on the table, yet that’s exactly what the governor directed just weeks ago,” Klarides said. “Instead, we should have used federal funds to open recovery centers.”
Stefanowksi said he also would have diverged from Lamont on the nursing home guidance, and like Klarides said the state should have reopened the recovery centers, also known as “step-down” facilities, used to address overcrowding at hospitals.
An executive order from Lamont in April 2020 allowed for these facilities, which have generally been located at former or existing nursing homes or in separate units or wings of existing nursing homes.
Lamont said at a press conference earlier this month that staffing shortages are a main reason why the state is not resurrecting the facilities.
The governor recently issued two new executive orders applying to nursing homes — one requiring workers to get a booster shot by next month and another ordering visitors to provide proof of vaccination
or a recent negative test.
Referring to the order that nursing home visitors be vaccinated or test negative for COVID, Stefanowksi said, “Why, if he’s doing that, is he moving infected patients into nursing homes? That defies common sense.”