HARTFORD, Conn. — We are seeing concerning new trends in Connecticut’s COVID data, as some states like Rhode Island consider scaling back their reopening, but is Connecticut considering that?
Despite a positivity rate on Tuesday that doubled to 4.1%, Gov. Lamont says he’s not considering rolling back to phase two of the states reopening.
"I don’t right now see it happening at schools or workplaces or restaurants in the case of phase 2/3 but were keeping an eye on it."
According to the data tracking website COVID Act Now - 22% of CT’s ICU beds are occupied and state doctors say they are concerned about the rapid rise in hospitalizations.
Dr. Howard Forman is a Professor of Public Health at Yale University.
"What worries me a lot more is that hospital bed occupancy with COVID patients is clearly driving up...We were in mid-single digits at Yale NH Hospital, now we are up into dozens of patients that have a COVID diagnosis right now. Those numbers will continue to drift up over time," said Forman.
FOX61 asked Gov. Lamont if he’s considering setting up field hospitals again.
"No. we’re not there yet. We still have a lot of capacity at our hospitals and as you saw from the last briefing people are spending a lot less time in the hospitals than they were six months ago so I think we’ve got pretty good capacity for now."
And then there’s the issue of travel. COVID spread across the country has landed more states on CT’s travel quarantine list — most recently Massachusetts. But Massachusetts hasn’t added CT to theirs.
Causing confusion. What if you work in Massachusetts but live in CT?
"Should we not have a travel restriction for a western county in Massachusetts and have a travel restriction from Boston? It’s very difficult to use travel restrictions once you have this type of pernicious community spread," explained Dr. Forman.
Governor Lamont said, "Were going to work it out with Charlie Baker they just couldn’t quite pull the trigger yesterday when we announced what we are doing with the other states including Rhode Island but I think we’ll have something to announce pretty soon."