Hospitalizations Soar, CT COVID-19 Positivity Rate Over 10% + Latest Town-By-Town Updates

CONNECTICUT — COVID-19 infections in the state have neared a 2021 high.

The state daily coronavirus positivity rate climbed to 10.7 percent — and the 7-day average to 9.8 percent — in the latest set of numbers released by the Department of Public Health. The daily rate is just 0.01 percent shy of the 2021 record set on Jan. 11.

Lamont said state health officials were paying close attention to how the highly-transmissible omicron variant trended in South Africa and the United Kingdom, which were early stomping grounds for the new version of the virus. In both countries, omicron case numbers have fallen off, the governor said.

The daily coronavirus positivity rate is a function of the number of tests compared to the number of cases confirmed positive each day. Over the long weekend, 14,654 positive tests were logged, out of 136,857 tests taken.

Connecticut Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said she expected the daily number "is not going to be accurate anymore" as the number of tests performed at home and not reported to DPH increases with the new availability of 3 million self-tests. Health officials announced earlier their plans to distribute the at-home rapid tests in the next two weeks.

Lamont said he foresees the distribution of the extra tests will "take a lot of the stress off" of the testing facilities, which are reported widely to be swamped, with long wait times. The state has established 400 testing sites, and close to a thousand venues to administer vaccine boosters, Lamont said.

The state will be prioritizing the first wave of at-home tests to "populations that we know may have harder access to get at-home tests on their own," state Chief-Operating Officer Josh Geballe said during a news conference Monday. Those special populations will include homeless shelters, and the distributions will be coordinated with Connecticut FoodShare and clergy, Geballe said.

COVID-19 Hospitalizations Climb

As high as the positivity rate is, Lamont said the state pays special attention to hospitalizations, and called the 88 additional hospitalizations DPH logged over the weekend "concerning." The total number of residents hospitalized with the virus is 925, as reported Monday by the state.

Of those, 732 (79.1 percent) are not fully vaccinated.

Most of the hospitalized — 273 — are in Hartford 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.