COVID-19 School Cases Continue to Climb In CT

CONNECTICUT — The number of COVID-19 cases among Connecticut PK-12 staff has declined even as infections among the state's student bodies have continued to escalate over the past week.

On Thursday, the Department of Public Health reported 2,914 new infections for students, bringing the total number of student coronavirus cases to 12,740.

DPH logged 2,467 positive COVID-19 cases among school staff, a drop of 300 from 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.

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. 19 through Jan. 01. 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.

All Connecticut residents over the age of 5 are currently eligible to receive the vaccines. The state maintains an online database of vaccination clinic locations here.

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, 89 percent of those between 45-54 (up 1 percent from last week), 91 percent of those between 35-44 (up 1 percent), 85 percent of those between 25-34 (up 1 percent), 80 percent of those between 18-24 (up 2 percent), 84 percent of those between 16-17 (up 1 percent), 76 percent of those between 12-15 (up 1 percent) and 32 percent of those aged 5-11 (up 2 percent).

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

As of Wednesday, 115,021 cases of COVID-19 among fully vaccinated persons in Connecticut have been identified. Of the 2,540,829 persons who are fully vaccinated, 4.53 percent have contracted the virus.

Three hundred fifty-five COVID-19 related deaths have occurred among the 115,021 fully vaccinated persons confirmed with COVID-19.

The latest data show unvaccinated residents have a 19 times higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, compared to the vaccinated. Their risk of hospitalization is 7 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.

One hundred and sixty-one residents have died from COVID-19 over the past seven days, up from last week's DPH report of 121 deaths. The Connecticut coronavirus death toll — an indicator that typically lags infections and hospitalizations —is currently 9,442.

After an unrelenting three-month ascent that threatened to break the early-pandemic record for COVID-19-hospitalizations set in April 2020, the number of beds filled with coronavirus patients in Connecticut receded further on Friday. The state Department of Public Health reported the number has dropped to 1,895, down 22 beds overnight.

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Of those hospitalized in Connecticut, about one-third are fully vaccinated.

The highest number of the hospitalized —626 — are in New Haven County.

COVID-19 infections in the state have dropped nearly another percentage point overnight, to 19.35 percent, according to the latest DPH data.

The daily coronavirus positivity rate is a function of the number of tests compared to the number of cases confirmed positive each day. Overnight, 8,783 positive cases were logged, out of 45,398 tests taken. The numbers of tests and cases confirmed do not include those taken with at-home self-test kits.

See also: CT Student, 13, In 'Grave Condition' After Suspected Exposure To Fentanyl At School: Report

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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.