Danbury In Red Zone, Boughton To Hold Off On Reverting To Phase 2

DANBURY, CT — After Gov. Ned Lamont announced Thursday that Danbury is one of 11 Connecticut cities that is in the state's coronavirus Red Alert zone, Mayor Mark Boughton announced he will wait until after the weekend to decide whether to revert back to Phase 2 of reopening.

In a daily Live @ 5 broadcast, Boughton said that he had spoken to Lamont and informed the governor he plans to wait to decide what the city will do after Thursday’s announcement. Boughton is required to give state officials a 96-hour notice if he is going to move back to phase 2, the mayor said.

“We’re going to wait — we’re going to wait through the weekend to see how it goes and where the numbers are over the weekend,” Boughton said Thursday. “But it’s not good, right? It’s bad. You’ve got to follow the guidance, you’ve got to wear your mask.”

Boughton said six new cases were announced in Danbury, which prompted Boughton to hold off on rolling back to Phase 2. Lamont announced at the end of September that he was moving the state to Phase 3 of his reopening plan, which eases up on restrictions put in place, including in restaurants, where establishments can operate at 75 percent capacity.

“We don’t want to do anything that would anyone out of business or anything like that,” he said.

Nine of the 11 cities in the Red Alert zone are in Eastern Connecticut. Cities that average 15 new coronavirus cases per day per 100,000 in population are considered to be in the red zone. Danbury is averaging 15.2 cases per day over a two-week period, according to the latest numbers.

Lamont announced three new coronavirus cases statewide on Thursday, which takes Connecticut’s death toll to 4,540. Lamont announced 213 new cases on Thursday among the 15,817 people who were tested over the past 24 hours.

Lamont said in his daily press briefing that he is disappointed that Danbury is “still on this as a red alert…because we have been bringing the cavalry there for three or four weeks.”

Boughton said that schools in Danbury are still on pace to move to a hybrid learning model on Oct. 26. However, he said Thursday that if the city’s numbers continue to rise and move closer to 16 percent, he may be forced to tell school officials to push back moving to the hybrid model for a couple of weeks. He stressed the need for residents to wear masks, wash their hands on a regular basis and avoid large crowds.

Asked by a viewer if the city planned to fine people for not wearing face-coverings in public, Boughton said there were no plans to do so as the city does not have the "bandwidth" to police the city for violators. He said the only exception would be if offenders were overly egregious in not wearing a mask.

Boughton said that there are no hot spots for the coronavirus pandemic in Danbury and said that people needed to do their best to avoid large gatherings. On Thursday, acting state health commissioner Deirdre Gifford said that in most cases, people in highly impacted areas of the state are failing to observe social distancing guidelines and said that people needed to be aware of spending too much time with people outside of their immediate family.

“It’s in settings that people might consider to be benign because they are small and they are with people that they know,” Gifford said. “The transmission we’re seeing is happening among friends and family and co-workers. Whether that has been a social setting at the workplace or a social setting before or after work, or if it’s happening on the weekend with friends and family and people letting their guard down a bit on the mask-wearing, that’s where we are seeing the transmission. This virus is extremely contagious.”