Coronavirus Cases Soar Amid Vaccine Talk; Update On Restaurants

CONNECTICUT — It's always darkest before the dawn, as your grandmother would say. Health care officials across the state are hoping the old adage holds up for the coronavirus winter, because residents could sure use some sunshine right about now.

That's coming, Gov. Ned Lamont told reporters on Wednesday, in the form of two vaccines that the state's coronavirus vaccine task force will start rolling out in mid-December.

The Pfizer vaccine is scheduled for its first distribution in Connecticut on Dec. 14, and Moderna's candidate will become available here Dec. 21 — all assuming the U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants emergency use authorization. Both vaccine candidates require two doses spread weeks apart and a time period after the second dose for the vaccine to take effect.

The vaccines may be set to drop, but not everyone is ready to catch them. A state that barely embraces vaccinations during the best of times may require some convincing not to take a hard pass on one that was rushed to market during an election year. Lamont has said he has no plans to make the jabs mandatory. (Patch is conducting an informal survey on this topic, so please let us know where you stand. CT Patch Survey: Will You Take The Coronavirus Vaccine?.)

2 Steps Forward, 10 Steps Back

Two towns were removed from the state's coronavirus red zone map on Thursday, but 10 towns were added, meaning you can now count all the non-red zone towns on your fingers.

The state as a whole averaged 47.6 daily cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents and a 6.4 percent positive test rate; that is up slightly from 45.1 and 6.2 percent from last week's report.

Danbury continues to struggle with coronavirus infections with the second highest per capita rate in the state and the highest positive test rate over the past two weeks.

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For the first time since its inception, no new states or territories were added to Connecticut's weekly coronavirus travel advisory Tuesday. The club kept to a not-very-exclusive membership of 48 states and territories.

When and if more locations are added to the list, Connecticut will likely task their incoming travelers with new, relaxed guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new guidelines allow quarantines to be shortened to 10 days if the quarantined show no symptoms, or seven if the person who is in quarantine receives a negative coronavirus test and is asymptomatic.

Nearly 1.2 million people passed through United States airports last Sunday, the most since the start of the pandemic in March. Health experts warned that heavy travel over the next few weeks will contribute to a bigger coronavirus surge.

Keeping the Restaurant Dining Rooms Open

To shut down, or not shut down? Lamont took a high-profile hammering from advocates on both sides of the argument this week.

A group of 35 doctors and nurses from Yale School of Medicine, Yale New Haven Health, and the VA-Connecticut Healthcare System wrote a letter to the governor imploring him to shut down the state as hospitals are being stretched thin amid a second wave of infections. The doctors claimed that gyms were major hubs for coronavirus, and that the virus was spreading in restaurants through ventilation systems.

"Even though it is still early in the second wave, we are already spilling outside our ICUs, calling for extra volunteers, and we are exhausting the supply of advance-practice nurses and medical residents who help us provide the best possible care," the letter stated, as reported by NBC CT.

On the same day Lamont met with those doctors, the Connecticut Restaurant Association served up a letter of their own to the governor. His industry is "on the verge of collapse," CRA Executive Director Scott Dolch wrote, and without Lamont's commitment and real support, "thousands of restaurants across Connecticut will be forced to close — and the vast majority of them will never reopen."

After meeting with the doctors, the governor told reporters he was not inclined to impose any more restrictions on restaurants. Indoor dining was already down by 3 percent from September 2019 to September 2020, an 18 percent decline year over year in October, and a whopping 43 percent decline from November 2019 to November 2020. He said people seemed to have taken a cue from the rising coronavirus numbers in October and November, and have been eating at home.

What's more, a tighter clampdown on Connecticut eateries would require comparable restrictions be imposed in neighboring states, Lamont said Monday afternoon.

Still, there has been a steady drumbeat for more restrictions ever since the reopening, and it has only gotten louder the deeper into the pandemic's second wave the state gets. When pressed by a listener to a Hartford radio show about the possibility of a state shutdown during the last two weeks of the year, Lamont appeared thoughtful:

"Look, that's a pretty slow time. Kids already are not in school, you're probably not doing as much shopping and dining, so that is a possibility."

The governor has said on numerous occasions that his key decision-making metric when it comes to shutdowns and reopenings is the number of hospitalizations. Here's what that's looked like since September:

Despite a slight dip in the trajectory on Wednesday, the numbers don't make a great case for the stay-open advocates.

The other metrics have been even uglier, likely reflective of some "Thanksgiving effects," as Lamont referred to them on Wednesday. That was the day the coronavirus positivity rate hit a state record 7.13 percent.

There was one ray of light, not to be overlooked: Schools in Connecticut reported decreases in the number of reported coronavirus cases among students and staff in the past week. It was the first drop since the school year began and the decrease was among students at all learning levels.