WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — As COVID continues to surge across Connecticut, individual communities and individual businesses are being left to decide for themselves what, if any, measures they want to put in place to try and slow the spread.
Very few communities have decided to go back to a full mask mandate. In West Hartford, a mask mandate goes into effect Monday, but it’s only for municipal buildings, with the main goal being to keep essential government services running.
All but five communities were in the ‘red zone’ of COVID spread as of Friday. The state's health commissioner recently tweeted, “Omicron is spreading like wildfire.”
"We’ve been watching our increasing case count over the past few weeks," West Hartford Town Manager Matt Hart said.
They are among seven communities to recently revert back to some form of a mask mandate.
“We want to be able to protect our workforce. We’ve got a lot of people performing very critical and important jobs,” explained Hart.
So is West Hartford considering a mask mandate expansion town-wide?
“With respect to a town-wide universal mandate, we haven’t made that decision yet. We are monitoring conditions carefully. I will add that if we are to proceed and take that step, it would be most beneficial to do that as a region and ideally as a state,” said Hart
But Lamont has made it clear he’s not eager to implement a statewide mask mandate.
“Right now there’s no need to do that," Lamont said. "I think the towns are the ones taking the lead on enforcing it.”
“Quite honestly, I’d like to see the entire world wearing masks right now,” Sandy Cohen said.
She is the owner of Advanced Home Medical Supplies. The sign on the door of her business reads "face mask required even if you have been vaccinated."
“Given that we do medical supplies we do have a lot of vulnerable elderly people coming in and who are immunocompromised," she explained. "We currently have a staff member that tested positive. Fully vaccinated and boosted. He would not have known. He was totally asymptomatic.”
With West Hartford being a popular shopping community, there was no shortage of face mask required signs at merchants.
“You don’t know who’s been vaccinated and who hasn’t, so I generally try and wear my mask inside anyway in public spaces just to be more careful,” said Jude Reid, who works in West Hartford.
Matt Caron is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at mcaron@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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