The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Official: Booster shots should help lessen COVID spread
MIDDLETOWN — The city is turning its focus to booster shots in a series of clinics aimed at lowering the number of COVID-19 cases as well as transmission rates.
The health department receives data from the state health office on a biweekly basis. Between Sept. 26 and Oct. 9, a total of 14,594 tests were conducted, similar to the previous two weeks, at 14,296. The percent of positive cases over that period were 0.7 percent, according to the city COVID summary.
Acting Health Director Kevin Elak said the positivity rate is relatively low, because a lot of testing is done in Middletown, between pharmacies and the new testing site at Cross Street (AME Zion Church), as well as Wesleyan University regularly testing its staff and students.
Since the pandemic began, the total number of cases in Middletown is 5,018 (up 38 in the last two weeks). The total number of confirmed deaths rose by two in that period, for a total of 148, according to Elak’s weekly report.
Elak said Friday that the enormous amount of testing being done will reflect an uptick in cases, which have risen recently.
“We’ve seen a little spike of cases again,” he said. “I have a feeling we are going to head north again next week.”
That may be due to a number of factors, including that winter is coming, when more people will be moving indoors. “We may see a little uptick again after that, but hopefully it’s not going to be anything near what we’ve seen before,” Elak said.
He predicts the numbers will fluctuate up and
The number of state employees flouting Gov. Ned Lamont’s order to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing more than doubled over the last two weeks, the administration said Friday, even as the overall percentage of fully vaccinated workers rose slightly.
A total of 1,482 workers — roughly 5 percent of the state’s 30,623 executive branch employees — were not in compliance with Lamont’s vaccine mandate, according to the latest data released Friday. That’s up from 671 non-compliant workers listed in the administration’s last report on Oct. 7.
The spike in non-compliance was largely driven by unvaccinated employees who failed to submit proper proof of weekly testing.
The vast majority of state
workers have chosen to comply with Lamont’s order by getting vaccinated. That number rose even higher this month, going from 78.5 percent of workers on Oct. 7 to 80.8 percent
as of Friday’s report.
“The majority of employees who are not in compliance at the moment are due to incomplete or late testing result submissions and have indicated to us that they are in the process of getting that rectified,” said David Bednarz, a spokesman for Lamont. “When those temporary situations are rectified, we anticipate more than 99 percent will be in compliance.”
Lamont has backed up his order by placing veteran workers on unpaid leave for refusing to comply as well as firing workers who are within their six-month probationary period.
His administration clarified on Friday that 22 probationary workers have been fired, down from the 28 cited last week due to an error that caused six employees to be included in the count who were fired for reasons other than noncompliance with the vaccine mandate.
There were 29 veteran employees on unpaid leave for non-compliance Friday — up from 14 last week — and another 70 employees who were in the process of being placed on unpaid leave.
The state also announced Friday another 453 Connecticut residents had tested positive for the virus, with a daily positivity rate of 1.79 percent. There were 211 people hospitalized Friday with COVID, a net decrease of 13 patients.
While the number of daily coronavirus infections in Connecticut have waned slightly since August, when Lamont first announced the vaccine mandate for state employees, health experts this week said it was still too soon to begin easing up on other public safety precautions such as indoor mask wearing.
State hospital employees and workers at long-term care facilities were not given the option to forgo vaccination in lieu of weekly testing, unless they have a religious or medical exemption. The data released by the Lamont administration on Friday showed that agency workers in those categories — such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Developmental Services — were vaccinated at a rate of 86 percent, and that 4 percent were out of compliance with the mandate.
State agencies with the highest rates of non-compliant workers included the Department of Correction and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection — each at 9 percent — as well as the Department of Education and Connecticut Technical Education and Career Systems, at 7 percent.
The Office of Early Childhood Education, with 118 employees, was the only executive branch agency to report complete compliance with the governor’s mandate.