NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Students at the Yale School of public health are beginning the semester learning about public health, in the midst of a pandemic.
Governor Ned Lamont took part in a roundtable discussion today about the impact of COVID-19 has had on the state of Connecticut.
He was joined by researchers from the Yale school of public health.
“It was a Saturday night in early March that we got the call, a nurse in Danbury Hospital was the first Connecticut infection that we could identify,” said Governor Lamont recalling how and when covid19 hit Connecticut.
As the Yale school of public health welcomed students back today, they jumped right into focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic. They did so with a roundtable discussion about the pandemic and the impacts it’s had.
The governor was joined by other experts who broke down what worked here in our state.
“What made this different from other states, was first of all it was done early. I think we were ahead of the curve in terms of other states,” said Dr Albert Ko, Yale School of Medicine.
The governor spoke to students about putting together the re-open Connecticut committee and the precautions they recommended.
“Ever since that May 20th date when we started reopening our infection rate as a state has been going down virtually every week there after. We’re fortunately one of the very few states that have an infection right in and around 1%,” said Governor Lamont.
Now for students enrolled in the Yale school of public health, the focus now turns to the winter months and the role influenza will play in this pandemic.
“The pressure points coming up into winter season are increased contact rates, we’re reopening our schools. The second would be the cold weather. People having more contact. What are we going to do differently,” said Dr. Ko.
It's been officially six months since Connecticut saw its first positive COVID-19 case. Two days later on March 10th, Gov. Lamont had declared a public health emergency. On March 18th, there was the first confirmed death due to complications from COVID-19.
Last week, there was pushback from state lawmakers after Gov. Lamont had announced he would be extending his executive powers until February 2021. They were set to expire on September 9th.
Just a couple weeks ago, Yale had announced that researchers at the School of Public Health had come up with a saliva-based COVID-19 test that could significantly reduce wait times and the cost.
The method is called saliva direct and they’ve already tested it on players and staff in the NBA.