The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State’s COVID survival rate improves
Connecticut had one of the worst COVID death rates in the United States at the start of the pandemic. Data shows that’s not true any more.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week marked 1 million deaths from COVID in the United States. About 1 percent of those, a few more than 10,000, were in Connecticut.
The death rate per population from the coronavirus in Connecticut has gone from one of the worst at the start of the pandemic to middle-of-the-road.
“In terms of deaths from COVID-19, one is too many,” said state Department of Health spokesman Chris Boyle.
The first death from COVID in Connecticut was announced on March 18, 2020.
“It is with sadness today that we are confirming the first death of a person in Connecticut due to severe complications from COVID-19,” Gov. Ned Lamont said then. “The patient, a man in his 80s, had recently been admitted to Danbury Hospital, where he was receiving treatment.”
On May 16, 2020, a few months later, there had been 3,339 COVID-related deaths in the
state, according to CDC data, 92.6 deaths for every 100,000 residents.
In terms of death rates from COVID, Connecticut was Behind New York where 141.2 people for every 100,000 residents died from COVID, and New Jersey, where 100.33 people for every 100,000 had died of COVID.
“Three months into the pandemic we were ground zero,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist at Hartford HealthCare. “It really hadn't affected other parts of the country at that time as much as it did the northeast.”
Nearby New York City, Boyle said, had been the “epicenter” of the disease early in the pandemic, which he said “had a devastating impact on Connecticut and the entire northeast.”
“This head-on collision with what we called at the time, ‘coronavirus,' did not have the same immediate effect across the United States as it did here at home,” Boyle said.
The situation has changed. Nearly 11,000 people have died of a COVID infection in Connecticut, 302.67 for every 100,000 residents. That puts Connecticut at 27th of 50 states, in terms of death rates from the coronavirus, based on a Hearst Connecticut Media analysis of CDC data.
Arizona has had the most deaths from COVID as a share of the total population, 422.71 for every 100,000 residents. Mississippi, with a rate of 420,66, and Alabama, with a rate of 390.72, are not far behind.
Vermont has so far had the lowest death rate in the nation, 95.94 COVID deaths per 100,000. Behind Vermont are Hawaii (97.71) and Utah (145.52).
COVID death rates in the northeast, according to Scott Roberts, associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital, were “inflated” early on because the health care system was not initially prepared for what was to come.
“The northeast was one of the hardest hit areas early in the pandemic,” he said. “This inflated death rates compared to areas that were not hit as hard and was largely due to an overwhelmed healthcare system leading to a lack of resources.”
Roberts specifically mentioned nursing care. In the early days of the pandemic, the number of patients rose to beyond what hospitals could bear.
“Nurses were taxed to much higher patient-nurse ratios in the first wave,” he said. “Now things are much more balanced and the system is not taxed, so our death rates have settled in comparison to the rest of the country.”
Boyle said COVID vaccines, which have prevented some of the worst symptoms, had an effect on death rates, as did increasingly available testing and treatment.
“Over time, we identified the tools needed that have
put us in a far better place than where we were more than two years ago,” Boyle said. “The first round of vaccines were rolled out and then eventually came boosters, hundreds of testing sites, self-test kits, and now, therapeutics.”
“Except for the initial wave of COVID-19 that impacted the northeast, death rates in Connecticut are far better than many other states because of all the tools
that our residents have used,” he said.
On Tuesday, state officials reported there were 10,313 confirmed positive COVID cases over the last seven days and that the positivity rate over that period was 13.41% – a slight increase from Monday's reported data of 13.05 percent. There were 361 reported hospitalizations due to COVID-19, an increase from Monday's 331 patients.