Americans keep hearing that it is important to test frequently for covid-19 at home. But just try to find an “at-home” rapid COVID test in a store and at a price that makes frequent tests affordable. Testing, as well as mask-wearing, is an important measure if the country ever hopes to beat COVID, restore normal routines and get the economy running efficiently. To get Americans cheaper tests, the federal government now plans to have insurance companies pay for them. The Biden administration announced Jan. 10 that every person with private insurance can get full coverage for eight rapid tests ..read more

Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). A COVID-19 PCR home test kit. Statewide COVID-19 activity continues to decline, a trend that state officials say makes them hopeful for the next weeks of the pandemic. Connecticut’s daily test positivity rate dropped to 13.29% on Thursday and 13.69% on Friday, according to the Department of Public Health. That’s down from a high of 24.55% less than two weeks ago. About 1,695 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Friday, a decrease of 38 patients from the day before. “That’s opening up beds, and, by the way, we have a lot more nurses returning to work than ..read more

On the day before the start of the spring semester, community college faculty from around the state called for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities governing board to implement stricter COVID safety standards as they return to campuses in person. During the Thursday press conference, faculty asked for the CSCU administration to distribute more N95 masks to students and employees at the colleges, ensure social distancing is enforced, improve telework accommodations, allow faculty to move classes fully online for the first two weeks of the semester and require proof of vaccination fo ..read more

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org People line up for COVID-19 tests in Hartford in December. It is one of the 15 testing sites Sema4 has been running under contract with the Department of Public Health. On Monday Jan. 3, four hours before South Windsor was to begin distributing its limited supply of at-home COVID test kits, police notified Town Manager Michael Maniscalco that cars were already lining up outside Rye Park. Maniscalco wondered how the state ended up in such a precarious position. Hours-long waits for COVID tests had become common as people flooded the state’s scattered testing s ..read more

MARK PAZNIOKAS :: CTMIRROR.ORG Gov. Ned Lamont at a hospital in Stamford on Jan. 3, when COVID cases were surging. Behind him are state Sen. Patricia B. Miller and Mayor Caroline Simmons. Legislative leaders said Wednesday night that Gov. Ned Lamont will not seek an extension of his executive order requiring state employees to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing. His decision takes one of his more controversial orders off the table as the governor and lawmakers negotiate new rules for managing the pandemic after the expiration of his emergency powers on Feb. 15 ..read more

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org Sofia Agranovich has lunch at Beechwood Rehabilitation and Nursing Care in March 2021. Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday issued a new emergency order requiring visitors to nursing homes to be vaccinated or have proof of a recent negative COVID test before they can enter a facility. “We know that some of the people who are most vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19 include those who live in nursing homes, which is why we need to be doing everything we can to protect them from this virus,” Lamont said. “This is one more precaution we can implement at these facilities to ..read more

Steven Geringer/Yale University Photo Annabelle Pan, a research scientist in Jordan Peccia’s lab at Yale University, examines sludge samples. Of all the methods of measuring the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, one has been consistently reliable: the amount of the virus in sewage. Yale University researchers have been sampling wastewater plants in Connecticut since the early stages of the pandemic, and the latest numbers from that testing have one official “cautiously optimistic” the omicron wave has finally crested in the state. The recent data provide a clear example of the valuable ..read more

The most familiar indicator of COVID-19’s inexorable nationwide spread —daily state and local case counts— may be on the way out. Instead, public health officials are considering a shift from increasingly inaccurate case data to numbers they say better represent the effect of the disease on the community and the health care system: COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. Omicron case counts are shattering all previous COVID-19 records. But the numbers don’t carry the same weight they used to. State and local health departments are preparing to explain that to the public and start reporting more ..read more

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, the largest correctional facility in New England. After a year and a half of the pandemic working its way through the state’s prisons and jails, COVID-19 had slowed down in the corrections system by the beginning of September. Fewer prisoners were being sent to the medical isolation unit at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, infection rates among the incarcerated population were falling and no one had died since Jan. 25. As fall transitioned to winter, four incarcerated people died from the virus. In ..read more

Cloe Poisson :: CTMirror.org Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. As multiple colleges and universities around Connecticut moved classes online and delayed students’ return to campus for the spring semester due to a recent rise in COVID-19 cases, the Connecticut State Colleges and University system announced that it will begin the spring 2022 semester as originally scheduled. The announcement sent out Thursday stated that state university students will move into residence halls as scheduled on Jan. 17 and 18, and in-person classes will start on Jan. 19. In-person classes at ..read more