Hair Services Reopening June 1 In CT, New Details Released

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont announced that hair salons and barber shops will now be able to reopen June 1 after he decided to push the date back from May 20.

Lamont decided to push back the hair salon and barbershop reopening to June 1 after hearing from many people in the industry who said they weren’t ready to reopen. The decision was made Monday, just two days before salons and barber shops were scheduled to reopen.

“Look I apologize because I know some of you are all set ready to go on May 20,” he said. “Give us a little bit more time for all your peers to get up and operating.”

Several hair stylists said that child care continued to be an issue and that they needed more time to find a place for their children while they worked, Lamont said.

“I heard from a lot of stylists, I heard from a lot of the folks that run the hair salons and they said 'Give us a little more time, we are just not ready,'” Lamont said.

Lamont in part made his decision to push it back in conjunction with Rhode Island, which is also targeting early June for a hair salon reopening.

Hospitalizations nearing month-straight decline

COVID-19 hospitalizations dropped by 17 patients between Sunday and morning. Another 697 positive coronavirus cases were announced out of 7,072 tests performed. There were also another 41 deaths reported.

As of Monday there have been more than 38,000 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases, 3,449 associated deaths and more than 177,000 total tests performed in Connecticut.

The hospitalization drop puts Connecticut at nearly a month of declines; around 11 percent of hospital beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients, Lamont said. The state's reopening goal is to have less than 20 percent of beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.

Connecticut hit its reopening goal on testing capacity with more than 45,000 tests completed within the past seven days. Capacity doubled over the course of about a week and the state is on track to perform 100,000 tests weekly by mid-June, Lamont said.

Connecticut is only two days away from its first reopening phase, but many consumers have said they aren't ready to get back to things like outdoor dining.

Connecticut’s own internal data shows around 70 percent of people are wary about patronizing businesses right after the May 20 reopening, said Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner David Lehman.

Around 27 percent of Patch readers who responded to an informal survey said they would feel comfortable with outdoor dining in the first week of the reopening; About 25 percent said the same for personal services like hair salons.

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Lamont Pushes Back Reopening Of Hair Salons And Barbershops

Phase 2 reopening

The second phase of Connecticut reopening after Jun 20 will have a lot more contact tracing capacity and testing, Lamont said. It will also give Connecticut a few more weeks of observations both internally and from other states about the impacts of reopening.

An increase in the rate of infections or COVID-19 hospitalizations would delay the reopening, but Lamont said he is confident that won’t be the case in Connecticut.

Lamont said his personal instinct is he too will be cautious about patronizing businesses during the first phase and that ultimately businesses will be responsible for earning consumer confidence that their facilities are taking precautions seriously.