New wave of ‘red zones’
Local leaders shy away from new COVID restrictions even in state’s hardest-hit areas
An explosion of new towns and cities in the state’s COVID-19 “red zone” has prompted a new wave of hand-wringing over vaccinations, masks and distancing, though few local leaders in the state’s hardest-hit areas were considering imposing new rules as of Friday.
Many red-town leaders, among them Ansonia Mayor David Cassetti, Meriden Mayor Kevin Scarpati, New London Mayor Michael Passero and Easton First Selectman David Bindelglass, are continuing to limit mask mandates to municipal buildings only.
Officials in cities including Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk and Stamford — all of them in the red zone — had already extended their mask rules to public places, in attempt to thwart the transmission of the delta variant of the coronavirus.
As a result of a recent executive order by Gov. Ned Lamont, the cities and towns have far more leeway to issue restrictions. Many prefer a statewide set of rules as the state has quickly become a patchwork. Even with the rising red-town tide, leaders in most towns say they prefer voluntary guidelines.
Rules aside, the jump from seven communities in the redalert zone to 39 on Thursday creates new worries of community spread.
Communities are listed in the red if they averaged at least 15 new daily infections for every 100,000 people in the two weeks ending Aug. 7. Guidance for red zones includes recommendations for people to “postpone all indoor activities...postpone outdoor activities where mask weaing and social distancing cannot
be maintained...limit trips outside home, avoid gatherings with non-family members .... cancel public events and limit community gathering points.”
That guidance was created at the peak of the pandemic in 2020. With normal life having resumed this past spring, it’s unclear whether state officials even intend for people to follow the full guidance, and how local officials would go about doing so if that’s what they wanted.
“Whatever I do only applies to five square miles,” said Passero, the New London mayor. “It would need to be applied in a much larger area to have any effect.”
A decision next week
Despite that strict guidance, none of the of the local officials who spoke with Hearst Connecticut Media on Friday said they were actively planning new restrictions after being placed in red zones.
“We’re going to make a decision next week sometime, probably Tuesday or Wednesday,” Cassetti, in Ansonia, a Republican up for reelection, said Friday morning. City Hall employees and all visitors have been required to wear face masks in the building but Ansonia, like most towns, has not ordered masks in
restaurants and other private businesses, as Lamont’s order allows.
“It’s troubling, its concerning to see the numbers continue to rise,” said Scarpati, in Meriden, who does not have a political affiliation. “If there is any good news here, our vaccination rate is rising to 61 percent, which is higher than Hartford and Bridgeport.”
Cases ticked upwards on Friday, with the state recording a positivity rate of 2.68 percent as 542 new infections were found out of 20,236 tests. Hospitalizations rose by a dozen patients, bringing the statewide total to 259.
In Stamford, where Mayor David Martin on Tuesday issued an order requiring masks even at large outdoor events on town property, an organizer of a food festival that started Thursday called it “political theater” and said it would be up to the town to enforce the order.
The governor’s office and state public health officials are working with towns and cities that have questions but are not pushing specific towns to put new mandates in place, Max Reiss, a spokeman for Lamont, said Friday.
“What we’ve provided the cities and town at this time is a tool, if they would like to put in a mask mandate,” Reiss said, adding, “We are working with a number of cities and towns right now to increase both access to testing and access to vaccines.”
‘We started partying’
Most cities and towns throughout the populated corridors of Connecticut are either red or orange, with between 10 and 14 average daily infections per 100,000 residents. That includes every shoreline community between Greenwich and East Haven except Darien, which is behind only rural Canaan with the state’s highest vaccination rates.
The recent surge in cases around the state is due by and large to the delta variant, said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare, but he also attributed the rise in cases to relaxed social behaviors after vaccines became widely available.
“Masks came off, we started partying... because we felt we were protected,” he said in a phone interview. “The problem with the messaging around vaccinations was never really to prevent disease — that was a great side benefit — but it was to take a disease that was potentially deadly and turn it into a normal common cold.”
He said cases are rising slower than they were during the first wave of the pandemic in the spring of last year, but now the cases are split into two cohorts: those who are vaccinated, and those who are not.
“The vaccinated, by and large for the most part, are presenting with common cold like symptoms,” Wu said. “But by and large... this pandemic is affecting the unvaccinated. Those are the ones who are the sickest, those are the ones who are in the hospital and requiring a ventilator or ICU stays. Unfortunately a lot of our mortalities are in unvaccinated as well.”
That leaves town and city officials managing what has in effect become two separate crises, and the explosion of red zone places on Thursday put the situation into sharp focus.
An appeal to Lamont
Passero, in the southwest corner of the state, said worsening COVID infections that have placed his and four surrounding towns — Waterford, Ledyard, Stonington and North Stonington — in the red led him to call fellow Democrat Lamont on Thursday and request a county-wide or regional mask mandate to help slow the spread.
Passero said Lamont’s response to his request was “understanding,” but as of Friday the governor’s office continued to give individual cities and towns wide discretion to direct their own response to the pandemic.
In some towns, including in red zones, leaders have chosen not to impose any strict mandates.
In North Branford, for example, officials circulated guidance from the East Shore District Health Department urging people to wear masks indoors as local cases have increased by several-fold in recent weeks. As of Friday, however, the town is not requiring residents to wear masks in either private or municipally-owned buildings.
“At this point it’s just strongly recommended,” said North Branford Town Manager Michael Paulhus. “I’m going to monitor it.”
East Haven Mayor Joe Carfora said Friday that the town would also follow the guidance of the East Shore District Health Department.
“We’re recommending masks at your discretion,” Carfora said.
Carfora said he and other area leaders had met with health officials to discuss the issue and “we all agreed to recommend it.”
However, Carfora said it was important to note that the district and leaders in its member towns are paying close attention to COVID-19 numbers and will address it again in coming weeks.
“We're going to circle back at the end of the month,” Carfora said. “We’re going to see where the numbers are and will address it again, if anything has changed.”
‘I trust the people of Easton’
In tiny Durham, a small handful of reported cases this week were enough to place the town in the red.
Bill Milardo, Durham’s assistant health director, said visitors to town hall were largely following local guidance and wearing masks. Turning that guidance into a town-wide mandate would likely prompt more pushback, he said.
“I would imagine there would be some individuals not too happy with that, as there are throughout the country,” Milardo said.
Scarpati, in Meriden, does not anticipate extending the city’s year-and-ahalf-long rule on masks in city buildings, even with the red-alert designation. “For private businesses and others it’s optional. But it’s something we’re keeping a close eye on and we’re looking at the numbers daily.”
“Given the worsening numbers of infected and ill COVID patients both in Connecticut and in Easton, I am mandating that masks be worn in all public buildings in Easton,” Bindelglass,
a Democrat, wrote on Easton’s website this week. “Business will otherwise be conducted as usual.”
Bindelglass said he hoped that restaurants and farms would also require masks indoors as well. “I urge all residents to be appropriately cautious with social distancing, hand washing and to be thoughtful about what we do at home,” he wrote. “I do not take this action lightly. As always, I trust the people of Easton to do the right thing both for themselves and for our community.”
Worried about restaurants
Passero said he believed that concerns about throwing the state’s restaurant industry back into turmoil were behind much of the hesitancy for stricter mask rules. The mayor said he would not impose a mask order on restaurants in his own city, because he said that locals would simply drive a mile or two to patronize restaurants that were not under any mandates.
“That’s what’s not being talked about, that’s what’s causing reluctance,” Passero said. “It’s the restaurants, I think, that are causing the issue.”
Stonington First Selectwoman Danielle Chesebrough, who is not affiliated with a party, also said Friday that she would not issue any mask mandates beyond public buildings following conversations with local businesses, restaurants and the local Ledge Light Health District.
“We’ve basically gotten a lot of feedback that businesses and organizations really know their clients and customers fairly well, so they want to be autonomous to make those decisions,” Chesebrough said.
Passero also expressed a frustration over the number of residents who continued to shirk vaccines despite the urging of public health officials. He spoke to a reporter by phone Friday morning while waiting in line for a COVID test, which he said was prompted by an interaction Thursday with someone who he found out was unvaccinated.
“It’s completely irresponsible,” Passero said, adding a message for the unvaccinated. “Why are you doing this to everybody in our state and our region?”