COVID surge continues in Conn.
State’s COVID positivity rate still above 20%
The recent COVID-19 surge appeared to show little sign of slowing through the weekend after the state reported Monday that the positivity remained above 20 percent and hospitalizations continued to edge closer to a pandemic high.
Since Friday, an additional 31,405 COVID cases were discovered in 132,606 tests for a positivity rate of 23.68 percent, one of the highest on record. Hospitalizations increased a net of 79 patients for a total of 1,889 — the highest census since April 23, 2020, when the number was 1,947.
Since the Christmas holiday, infections across Connecticut have been surging amid a substantial demand for testing. Through all of last week, the positivity rate remained above 20 percent and hospitalizations continued to increase to highs not seen since the early weeks of the pandemic.
Despite a rampant increase in the number of infections and hospitalizations, state officials have been reluctant to revive mandates used early in the pandemic to limit the
spread of the virus. Gov. Ned Lamont has repeatedly said he has no intentions to institute a broad indoor mask mandate, saying he would rely on local municipalities instead to determine whether residents should wear masks.
“All of our densest communities have put in place a mask mandate. As you know, it’s those communities that are responsible for enforcing something like that. I think you will find that right now, we have the ability to keep ourselves safe,” Lamont said Monday. “If you go into a store, I can get vaccinated, I can get boostered, I’ve got access to a N95 mask. This is a very different situation than we were in a year and a half ago … and I think that’s reflected in our policies.”
But this latest surge comes as the state logs an increasing presence of the omicron variant, first discovered in November and believed to be highly infectious.
The latest figures froma statewide surveillance effort show that 53 percent of all cases submitted for genomic sequencing in recent weeks have been the omicron variant, with the remaining cases identified as the highly infectious delta strain.
But experts have cautioned that this process takes time, and noted that an early detection method, which requires confirmation from sequencing, has identified 93 percent of recent samples as omicron.
Amid the rash of new cases, officials have been optimistic in noting that it appears infections from omicron are less severe than those from previous variants, especially delta.
But hospitalizations, once considered a top metric for state officials, have been rising sharply in recent weeks.
In a briefing Monday morning, officials at Hartford HealthCare, one of the state’s largest hospital networks, said there were a total of 501 COVID patients — the most it has seen during the pandemic — in HHC facilities.
Dr. Ajay Kumar, HHC’s chief clinical officer, said 65 patients were in the intensive care unit, and 50 of them were on ventilators.
“We are patiently waiting the peak of the curve, and hopefully that will be soon,” said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for HHC.
But, unlike earlier in the pandemic, a portion of the cases are considered incidental — when someone comes to the hospital for a separate reason and then tests positive for COVID-19.
Similarly, at Trinity Health of New England, which runs major hospitals in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the number of COVID-19 patients has been climbing.
“At Trinity Health New England, we continue seeing a brisk uptick in our hospitalization numbers. And our positivity rates, as you all know in Connecticut and Massachusetts, are quite high, the highest they've been throughout the course of this pandemic,” said Dr. Syed Hussain, chief clinical officer for Trinity Health of New England.
Child care faces latest surge
While much of the focus has fallen on public preK-12 schools, state officials and providers said there is an increased effort to keep students safe in early childhood facilities.
“We work with one of the most vulnerable populations ... children 5 and under and they cannot be vaccinated,” said Monette Ferguson, executive director of Alliance for Community Empowerment in Bridgeport.
She said her organization is requiring a five-day isolation for staff members who test positive.
“For us to keep a workforce going, we have to respect those protocols. Is it injuring? Of course it is. Does it bruise the workforce? Of course it does. But we cannot help our families get back to work ... unless we respect these protocols.”
David Morgan, president and chief executive officer of the Waterbury-based human services agency Team Inc., pointed to the effort to get COVID-19 testing kits to providers early last week, similar to what was being done in public schools.
“We were challenged by everyone needing testing kits from all sectors, not just child care, school districts and beyond. We had some challenges accessing the testing kits, but make no mistake, we were able to utilize those testing kits in real time,” Morgan said, highlighting incidents in which children and workers were identified as being COVID-19 positive.
“Our ability to respond in real-time and increase health precautions and protocols, with CDC and public health guidance, that would not have been possible if we did not get those testing kits early last week,” Morgan said.
Officials said further distribution was done regionally over the weekend, and have since been able to go out to child care settings.
“We need more testing kits, and we need them more frequently,” Morgan said.
Keeping child care facilities open during the pandemic has been a focus of Lamont’s administration. Lamont remained committed to that Monday, acknowledging that keeping day cares and other facilities open allows doctors and nurses, and other key workers, on the job instead of home having to care for their children.
Speaking to the pandemic broadly, Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye said: “It’s been a real challenge that the providers have met.”