Deaths up as positivity rate, those in hospitals decline
While nearly all of Connecticut’s COVID metrics were trending downward Thursday, the new deaths reported in the past week were the highest in months, state data shows.
The 241 total deaths for the past week were 80 more than the 161 reported in the previous week and well above numbers seen prior to the latest surge in COVID-19 infections ahead of the holidays.
Speaking to the jump in deaths, Gov. Ned Lamont described it on Thursday as a lagging indicator of the latest COVID surge.
“Almost all of them unvaccinated, older, comobordities . ... I think that number will go down,” he said.
Though he did not offer a specific breakdown on
deaths among vaccinated and unvaccinated residents, Lamont did acknowledge the considerable difference in risk between the two groups.
“You are 18 times more likely to die if you are not vaccinated … nothing is 100 percent, nothing is foolproof, yet it’s another reminder that the vaccinations work. They keep you out of the ICU and they keep you alive,” Lamont said.
While the deaths spiked in the past week, the daily positivity rate and COVID-19 hospitalizations continued to drop. On Thursday, the state reported that 4,805 new cases were found in 36,158 COVID tests for a positivity rate of 13.29 percent, nearly seven percentage points lower than this time last week.
“We are probably one of the five-lowest infection rates in the country at 13.29 percent,” Lamont said. “You may say, ‘oh my god,’ that’s a high percent, but it gives you an idea of what is going on around the country.”
Hospitalizations, which had neared a pandemic high last week, fell again on Thursday by a net of 72 patients for a total of 1,733, about 90 fewer than a week ago.
Lamont noted that hospitalizations were declining and more health care workers were returning from infections, so the state was “balancing supply and demand there.”
Despite the rise in deaths, there was optimism about the trajectory of the pandemic, despite the somewhat unpredictable nature of the virus.
Lamont and other officials noted the surge from the omicron variant, first discovered in November in South Africa and now the dominant strain in Connecticut, appears to be sharply waning like it has in other parts of the world that were impacted sooner.
“I think when we get into February, we are going to have a better picture of what the overall outlook is here. There have been people, like me, who said delta would be the last major wave and omicron came along and surprised us,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and Connecticut resident who has advised Lamont on the pandemic, said Thursday during the governor’s COVID news conference.
Gottlieb offered the rosiest picture of the future of COVID-19, saying he believed cases should continue to drop into the spring and offer a quiet summer before another surge in the fall. But when that spike happens, there
will be even more tools to combat the virus, including a much broader availability of therapeutics that have recently garnered federal approvals.
With omicron’s rapid community spread that led to record infections in Connecticut, questions have been raised over whether it may be the last major wave of the pandemic, and a shift toward an endemic, where the virus is more of a routine part of the seasonal cycle of respiratory diseases.
“I do think we are approaching more of an endemic phase of this virus in our community. I would like to share the same optimism that Dr. Gottlieb has, but I do have caution about this virus surprising us throughout this pandemic at several times,” said Dr. Minasha Juthani, Connecticut’s public health commissioner.
As for what an endemic could look like, Gottlieb said he believes the shift will be from public officials issuing mandates to stem the spread of the virus toward “empowering individuals to take actions to keep themselves safe as it becomes an endemic, as this becomes a more routine part of life.”
But even if it’s unclear what path COVID-19 will take as the pandemic continues, some of that shift is already underway.
“Regardless, we are learning to live with COVID. We have so many tools with us now,” Juthani said.
Though the omicron surge may
be waning, issues are likely to continue as hospitals and health care networks treat a volume of patients not seen since the start of the pandemic.
“We have a rapidly improving picture around the tri-state region, certainly around the state. But we are not through this by any means, the holiday pressure on the health care system is going to be a lagging issue,” Gottlieb said.
So officials continued their messaging on the importance of vaccination, and then subsequent booster shots, in order to address this problem.
Lamont, speaking to the latest figures, acknowledged that someone is more than seven times as likely to get hospitalized if they are not vaccinated.
“That’s why we’ve got to get people vaccinated, keep them out of the hospital, maintain our capacity,” Lamont said.
In light of the still high levels of community transmission, the state has been paying particular attention to nursing homes, which were hit hardest early in the pandemic, Lamont said.
In the waning days of his emergency powers, Lamont has issued two recent executive orders involving nursing homes. Earlier this month, he announced that nursing home workers would be required to get a booster shot by next month. Previously, these employees were among the first required to get vaccinated.
On Wednesday, Lamont issued an order requiring all nursing home visitors to be vaccinated, have a negative test result or take a rapid antigen test in order to access a facility.
To meet this mandate, the state was planning to distribute 50,000 rapid antigen tests on Friday with the help of the Connecticut National Guard.
Nursing home residents and staff were among the first eligible to get vaccinated, and outbreaks of COVID-19 declined quickly in these facilities, where vaccination rates have been high, state figures show.
However, what is believed to be waning immunity from the vaccine has led to an increase in the number of nursing home COVID-19 cases. In the past two weeks, cases among nursing home residents have nearly doubled from 829 to 1,616. Deaths have seen a sharper increase from 13 to 53.
Officials have been urging boosters for residents in an effort to restore the protection amid one of the worst surges in COVID-19 activity during the pandemic.
State figures show about 77 percent of nursing home residents have received a booster.
“We’ve been sending the vaccination vans to the nursing homes, almost 80 percent of the residents are boostered,” Lamont said. “That is making sure we don’t have any big flare-ups there.”