CT COVID-19 Positivity Rate Climbs Over 8%, Highest Since January

CONNECTICUT — The state Department of Public Health is reporting the highest coronavirus positivity rate in Connecticut since the start of the year.

The data released Tuesday afternoon show the rate has climbed to 8.33 percent, an infection level not seen since Jan. 11. The rise comes almost exclusively on the back of the coronavirus delta variant, which accounts for nearly all the cases confirmed in the state.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced a second case of the omicron variant was detected in Connecticut Tuesday.

The startling jump in Connecticut infections comes as the daily average case count nationwide soared to 119,751 on Monday, the highest since Sept. 25, according to a NY Times tracker.

COVID-19 infections are climbing throughout the Northeast and Midwest, even as they recede dramatically in the South, which had been hit hard by the virus in the summer and early fall.

Lamont told "Face The Nation" that despite the regional COVID-19 spike, and the discovery of the new omicron variant in Connecticut, he still likes his state's chances against the virus, going into the winter.

"Omicron is coming up from New York on the I-95 corridor, but Delta is coming down from New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and no state is an island, and no country is an island," Lamont told host Maureen Brennan on Sunday. "So, the good news is we have 95 percent of our folks over the age of 12 have had some vaccine, so I think we are prepared. And I'd like to think that we're not going to have the surge in hospitals you see in some less vaccinated states."

Hospitalizations in the state rose by 25 beds overnight. Five hundred twenty-five patients are currently hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19; of those 125 (23.8 percent) are fully vaccinated.

Most of those hospitalized (167) are in Hartford County.

Albert Bourla, CEO of Groton-based vaccine maker Pfizer, tagged the omicron variant Tuesday as being milder than previous editions of the coronavirus, but likely more transmissible.

Speculation that omicron is not the scourge feared in earlier reports prompted the U.S. stock market to rise sharply.

Just over 81 percent of Connecticut's population has been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tuesday afternoon.

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