School COVID-19 Cases Skyrocket; Daily Positivity Rate Hits 26% In Latest Update

CONNECTICUT — The number of COVID-19 cases among Connecticut PK-12 students and staff has skyrocketed over the past week.

On Thursday, the Department of Public Health reported 7,612 new infections for students, up from 1,363 for the week prior.

DPH logged 2,338 positive COVID-19 cases among school staff, an increase from 477 recorded the previous week.

Cases among staff and students had remained relatively low until the first week of November, when they began their climb. Confirmed cases among both groups shot up dramatically after the first of the year. Both stats are higher than the 2020-21 school year numbers, which saw student cases peak at 1,618 and staff at 519 cases around this same time of year.

Here is the school-by-school breakdown.

Canaan remained the only town to stay off the highest infection tier in the latest set of numbers released from the state Department of Public Health. It has reported less than five cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents from Dec. 5 through Dec. 18. The rest of the state is in the high-alert red zone, according to DPH.

The color codes correspond to guidance from DPH. Populations in the red zone have reported 15 or more cases per 100,000 people over a two-week average.

Canaan, with its population of 1,053, is also the only town to be fully vaccinated.

Mansfield remains the vaccination outlier, still with just under 40 percent of its population fully vaccinated.

The graph above illustrates the slow progress toward complete vaccination.

As of Thursday, those residents who have received at least one dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 include more than 95 percent of those over the age of 55, 88 percent of those between 45-54, 90 percent of those between 35-44 (up 1 percent from last week), 84 percent of those between 25-34 (up 1 percent), 78 percent of those between 18-24 (up 1 percent), 83 percent of those between 16-17, 75 percent of those between 12-15 and 37 percent of those aged 5-11 (up 3 percent).

The table below shows cases and deaths among fully vaccinated persons by age group.

As of Wednesday, 83,147 cases of COVID-19 among fully vaccinated persons in Connecticut have been identified. Of the 2,526,891 persons who are fully vaccinated, 3.29 percent have contracted the virus.

Three hundred eleven COVID-19 related deaths have occurred among the 83,147 fully vaccinated
persons confirmed with COVID-19. These deaths represent 17.4 percent of all COVID-19 deaths since Feb. 9, 2021.

The latest data show unvaccinated residents have a 17 times higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, compared to the vaccinated. Their risk of hospitalization is 11 times greater, and the risk of infection is 3 times as great.

Although coronavirus deaths in Connecticut have declined markedly since February, it is important to note that death — and hospitalization — rates have consistently been higher among unvaccinated persons compared to fully vaccinated people.

According to the latest data released by the state Department of Public Health on Friday, the daily coronavirus positivity now stands at 26 percent, up 3.19 percent from Thursday's numbers. There were 10,076 new confirmed cases, from 41,038 tests, added in the past 24 hours.

Hospitalizations in Connecticut rose by 26 beds overnight. There are 1,810 patients currently hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19; of those 1,218, or 67.3 percent are not fully vaccinated, according to DPH.

In New Haven County, 627 residents are hospitalized with COVID-19, the most of any Connecticut county.

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Instructions on how to get COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters in Connecticut are available online, as is a list of walk-up clinics sponsored by DPH.