Lamont Leans Toward Keeping CT Restaurants Open

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont continues to lean toward keeping indoor restaurant dining open in Connecticut.

“If you close down restaurants, where do people go, they don’t stop, you know eating indoors, they just go to a different environment.,” Lamont said during a roundtable discussion Friday.

Lamont reiterated that he would like to do any future coronavirus restrictions in tandem with nearby states. Connecticut’s indoor dining is limited to 50 percent capacity.

Several Yale-affiliated doctors signed a letter urging Lamont to take stronger measures to contain spread of the coronavirus. Yale School of Medicine Dr. Manisha Juthani urged people in Connecticut to not eat with people from outside their immediate household and said that dining at a restaurant was a high-risk activity.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that indoor dining would end in New York City come Monday due to an increase in coronavirus hospitalizations and the city’s density. Outdoor dining, takeout and delivery will still be allowed.

Rhode Island has already curtailed indoor dining down to one-third capacity until Dec. 21.

Hospitalizations drop two days in a row

Connecticut reported nearly 3,800 new coronavirus cases Friday and a 6.97 percent positive test rate. For now the state has settled around a 7 percent positive test rate, Lamont said.

“I don’t think that necessarily means things are stabilizing, but at least they’re not going up like a hockey stick like we feared a couple of weeks ago,” he said.

Coronavirus net hospitalizations declined for the second day in a row with a drop of four patients down to 1,210.

Hospitalizations going down two days in a row is a “relatively big deal,” Lamont said.

The state also reported another 36 coronavirus-related deaths, bringing the total up to 5,363.

The towns with the biggest increase in cases over the past day are:

1. New Haven: 324
2. Bridgeport: 207
3. Waterbury: 147
4. Hamden: 144
5. Danbury: 140
6. Stamford: 137
7. Hartford: 134
8. Milford: 129
9. West Haven: 127
10. Fairfield: 91

The towns with the biggest increase in cases over the past week are

1. Waterbury: 1,053
2. Hartford: 1,088
3. Bridgeport: 984
4. Danbury: 825
5. Stamford: 821
6. New Haven: 664
7. New Britain: 598
8. Norwalk: 532
9. Meriden: 531
10. East Hartford: 408