Coronavirus Variants Spread As CT Preps To Loosen Restrictions

CONNECTICUT — The state is a little more than a week away from dropping capacity-based coronavirus restrictions on restaurants and most other businesses. The Connecticut Department of Public Health has reported the state's first death attributed to a new, more transmissible strain of the virus.

At least one Yale epidemiologist is having difficulty reconciling those two realities.

Nathan Grubaugh, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health, tweeted that Gov. Ned Lamont's plan to do away with most capacity regulations (while maintaining mask and social distancing requirements) before the end of the month "is a terrible idea."

What's got Grubaugh's attention, and concern, is the B.1.1.7. strain of the coronavirus, more commonly known as the U.K. variant. By all accounts, it is spreading quickly. On Monday the state reported 15 new cases, bringing the total to 81.

"In the New Haven County area, it has reached about 25 percent of the total viruses, and we project it will be the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage within just a couple of weeks," Grubaugh told National Public Radio on Monday. "And as this virus is more transmissible, I am quite nervous about what this is going to do to the total number of cases in the country, or in Connecticut."

At a news conference later that day, Gov. Ned Lamont assured residents that the U.K. variant was preventable with the current trio of vaccines Connecticut residents have available to them, and Grubaugh agreed. There was a "but," however.

"The problem is that the rollout on these vaccines has been slow," the epidemiologist said. "Too few of the population has been vaccinated."

According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Connecticut ranks 5th in the nation in total vaccine doses administered per 100,000 people. The vast majority of residents 55 and over have already been vaccinated, according to the state Department of Public Health. But we're still "months away" from being the 70-80 percent vaccinated Grubaugh believes we need to be for Lamont's latest reopening phase to be safe.

"We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves," he said.

Lamont said state health officials have been closely monitoring the spread of the U.K. variant in Florida, and San Diego. A more pressing matter for the professor are the virus's sibling strains from South Africa and Brazil.

"The concern with these two variants is that they can decrease vaccine efficacy," Grubaugh told NPR. The available vaccines will still protect the inoculated from death, he explained, but not transmission.

The second confirmed case of the South African variant was reported in Connecticut over the weekend.

According to the latest guidance from the CDC, those who have been vaccinated can gather indoors with other fully vaccinated people without wearing a mask, and can gather indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household.

Grubaugh called the health agency's guidance "appropriate," but noted: "The CDC is not saying that people who have not been vaccinated should go into a restaurant at full capacity." He would prefer the state wait to ease capacity restrictions until we have had "at least three weeks of sustained low level transmission" and had evidence that even after the B.1.1.7 became the majority virus, its cases were still declining.

Currently, cases are declining overall, but instances of the UK variant are climbing.

Grubaugh said there are a lot of similarities between epidemiological situation now with the variants, and the mysteries and uncertainties that plagued his profession's approach to the original strain a year ago.

"It's really hard to make decisions, and we could be lulled into a false sense of security where we get to the point where we have a third wave."