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During his latest COVID-19 briefing, Lamont said that as the virus continues to rapidly spread throughout the state and country he is looking at every option available, including limits on elective surgery and rolling back the reopening of the economy.
The move to mitigate comes as Connecticut has seen a spike in cases, infection rate, and hospitalizations in recent weeks as the overall positivity rate for the virus has hovered at or above 6 percent after staying steadily below 2 percent over the summer.
With the 37-day stretch between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day here, Lamont has expressed concern that different waves may of the virus spreading could overlap as friends and family gather in what would otherwise be innocuous settings if there wasn’t a pandemic.
In preparation of the COVID-19 vaccine, Lamont also signed an Executive Order this week that will permit pharmacists to administer the vaccine, will require the reporting on the administration of flu vaccines to patients under the age of 18, and caps the amount providers can charge to administer the vaccine.
“Capacity of our hospitals, capacity of our ICUs and the capacity of the nurses and (doctors) to that take care of people is the number one criteria as we think about what next steps we have,” Lamont said. “I can’t mandate common sense. All the little things that we do make a big impact in terms of small in-person interactions.”
Manisha Juthani, an infectious disease doctor at Yale Medicine, cautioned that over the next several weeks, things could get better until a vaccine is widely rolled out to the general population.
“January is going to be another heavy month for infections because it’s going to be the price we pay for December,” she said. “Our hospitals are full of patients that do not have COVID, and now also have COVID, so I think our hospital system is under tremendous stress taking care of the sick in Connecticut right now.”
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