HARTFORD, Conn. — As May 20th gets closer, Governor Ned Lamont laid out where the Connecticut stands on two key metrics - an adequate PPE supply and an increase in testing, which are both are important for "phase one" of the state's reopening plan.
During Tuesday's briefing, Governor Lamont broke down details of the state's "largest PPE shipment to date." Included in the order is:
- 6 million surgical masks
- 500,000 protective masks
- 100,000 surgical gowns
- 100,000 thermometers
According to the Governor, the state has delivered more surgical masks in the past two days than it has in the past two months.
"That means we have a supply of masks that ought to give some support to not just our first responders, not just to our amazing folks at the nursing homes, not just to food service workers, but we'll also be able to provide some to those smaller businesses as necessary as well," Governor Lamont said.
When it comes to surgical gowns, Governor Lamont said this latest shipment is "twice as many surgical gowns" as the state has received to date. He added the shipment of thermometers, which are an "early warning indicator" of COVID-19 would be distributed to businesses as needed.
"Whatever we do going forward on May 20th, I want you to know that we're hitting those health care metrics like a hammer right now - a nail and a hammer. We want to get this right to give you the customers, the consumers, some confidence that it's safe to slowly start getting back," Governor Lamont said.
Testing for COVID-19 is another important piece of the puzzle. According to the latest numbers, 138,424 tests have been performed so far, which is an increase of 5,916 from Monday.
Going forward, the state said it will look to continually increase the number of tests performed each week.
"We did about 18,000 tests a couple weeks ago. We doing about 29,000 tests a week now. I think we'll be surpassing the 42,000 tests a week - next week," Governor Lamont said.
On Tuesday, Governor Lamont said "we are getting there," and said partnerships with Yale New Haven Health and Jackson Laboratory would help even more.
According to Marna Borgstrom, the president and CEO of the Yale New Haven Health, testing capabilities have been ramping up in the YNHH system.
"Through a contract with the state, we can now expand that tremendously," Borgstrom said. "One of the limitations for us in the past was that we had the ability, we have staff, we do a variety of tests…throughout the Yale New Haven Health system…COVID-19 testing required different equipment, it required certain reagents, certain things in the supply chain like swabs that we were having trouble getting access to. With the support of the Governor's Office, we were able to get far up in the queue with some of the manufacturers, with others in the supply chain, and what we have committed to the state is that we will be ramping up to 5,000 tests a day by the end of this month."
Borgstrom says by the end of June, she hopes testing will increase 10,000 a day and to 20,000 a day by later this summer. She added she and other officials are looking to see how priority can be given to some of the high risk populations.
"Those who are in the hospital, those who are coming to the hospital, health care workers who are directly interacting with patients, working with local nursing homes, working with the prisons, working with some of our community partners to get testing sites out into schools that aren't being used right now so we can make it more and more available to people who need it and want it," Borgstrom said.
Borgstrom also spoke about the continual decline of hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients in the Yale New Haven Health System. She said at one point, Greenwich Hospital had 126 of its 200 beds occupied with COVID-19 patients. As of Tuesday, she said that number is below 40 with only a handful of people on ventilators.
"We're starting to see, I think, a light at the end of the tunnel," Borgstrom said.
She added they're doing about 20% of the surgeries that they used to do, and they have the capacity to "ramp up safely."
Another organization helping to increase with the state's testing is Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit biomedical research institution. According to executive vice president Auro Nair, the group will "dramatically increase testing capacity," over the next few months.
"Between now and July, we will be expanding our COVID-19 testing from 5,500 per day tests to 20,000 tests per day," Nair said.
Governor Lamont added with testing more widely available, he wanted to "lead by example," and revealed he was tested Tuesday.
"I held off because I thought we were very limited in terms of our testing capacity - this is going back a few weeks. We said people who are showing symptoms should only do it. With that said, testing is opened up. It's now more available. In many cases, we're encouraging people to please go and get testing. So, I led by example today. No results yet," Governor Lamont said.
