HARTFORD, CT — Over the past week more than 157 new cases of coronavirus have been reported among residents in Connecticut’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities, but new cases aren’t just concentrated there.
The second wave of COVID-19 has hit the state of Connecticut hard.
On Friday, there were 2,746 new cases, a record for one day. The 10,520 cases reported over the last seven days accounted for 12% of all COVID-19 cases in Connecticut to date – more than the total number of cases in the state between June 1 through August 31.
As of Friday, there were 784 nursing home residents with confirmed cases of COVID-19. There were also 659 people across the state who have been hospitalized with the virus.
Ajay Kumar, executive vice president and chief clinical officer at Hartford Healthcare, said the patients who are coming to the hospital are not using intensive care as much as they were during the first part of the pandemic.
“There has been some variability in the type of patients we’ve seeing,” Kumar said. “Obviously, the nursing home exposures create this rush of elderly patients coming to the hospital, but generally it’s a similar type of story that we saw in March and April, individuals who have some chronic and underlying disease so on and so forth are coming back at this time.”
He also said more younger people are testing positive for the virus.
According to state data, there have been 23 deaths among the 30 to 39 age group, 64 among those 40 to 49, 199 cases among those 50 to 59, 592 among those 60 to 69, 1,034 among those 70 to 79, and 2,819 among those 80 and older.
The state doesn’t report daily data over the weekends. All that information gets reported on Monday.
The second wave of the virus has also hit close to home for Gov. Ned Lamont and his staff following Friday’s announcement from his Communications Director, Max Reiss.
Following a release from the governor’s office Friday, Reiss reached out to the Capitol press corps and also tweeted to let reporters know directly that he had tested positive for the virus. Reiss’ children were already in quarantine when the test he took Thursday came back positive.
Reiss, who gets tested every Monday and Thursday, had tested negative twice over the past 10 days before receiving the positive test results Friday.
Since announcing the launch of its contact tracing app, there have been more than 300,000 people who have downloaded it on their Apple or Android phones.
The Bluetooth feature on the app anonymously notifies users if they have come into close proximity of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 for at least 15 minutes.