Free COVID-19 Tests Heading To Schools: What To Know + Latest Town-By-Town Case Updates

CONNECTICUT — The Biden administration said Wednesday it will provide 10 million free COVID-19 tests a month to U.S. schools to keep classes in person in Connecticut and elsewhere amid the omicron surge.

The tests — 5 million rapid tests and 5 million lab-based PCR tests — will be available to schools starting this month. The increased federal support for testing is in addition to the more than $10 billion devoted to school-based testing and $130 billion in other efforts to keep kids in the classroom, both authorized in the COVID-19 relief law.

President Joe Biden has pushed schools to remain open, citing the academic and social-emotional costs of remote learning. But he has faced mounting criticism over testing shortages as America’s 50 million school children and educators returned to the classroom.

The White House said 96 percent of schools opened for in-person learning after the holiday break, compared with 46 percent in January 2021. Without adequate testing, critics have said, schools become superspreader settings.

On Thursday, the Connecticut Department of Public Health reported 7,612 new infections for students, up from 1,363 for the week prior.

DPH logged 2,338 positive COVID-19 cases among school staff, an increase from 477 recorded the previous week.

Cases among staff and students in Connecticut had remained relatively low until the first week of November, when they began their climb. Confirmed cases among both groups shot up dramatically after the first of the year. Both stats are higher than the 2020-21 school year numbers, which saw student cases peak at 1,618 and staff at 519 cases around this same time of year.

Here's what the new test initiative means in Connecticut:

• One goal of the initiative is to close gaps in areas where testing is uneven or nonexistent. States must submit requests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the additional 5 million free rapid tests per month for high-need districts that can put the tests to immediate use. The first shipments will arrive later this month, according to the White House.

• The administration said it is immediately expanding lab capacity to support an additional 5 million lab-based PCR tests each month — which will be delivered through Department of Health and Human Services programs funded by coronavirus relief programs.

The initiative also targets federally backed testing sites to support school testing programs, including basing Federal Emergency Management Agency sites in schools. Also, the CDC is expected to release new “test-to-stay” guidance this week that allows the use of testing so close contacts of anyone who tested positive for the coronavirus can stay in classrooms.

The number of Connecticut residents hospitalized with COVID-19 continued its swift march to a pandemic record on Wednesday. The number of hospitalized coronavirus patients has climbed to 1,939, up an additional 19 overnight, and just 33 shy of the record 1,972 set in April 2020.

Of those, 1,324 (68.3 percent) are not fully vaccinated.

The highest number of the hospitalized —634 — are in New Haven County.

COVID-19 infections in the state have dropped by over 2 percent overnight, to 21.24 percent, according to the latest DPH data.

The daily coronavirus positivity rate is a function of the number of tests compared to the number of cases confirmed positive each day. Overnight, 7,318 positive cases were logged, out of 34,460 tests taken. The numbers of tests and cases confirmed do not include those taken with at-home self-test kits.

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Instructions on how to get COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters in Connecticut are available online, as is a list of walk-up clinics sponsored by DPH.