Lamont Teases Giving CT Schools Option To Relax Mask Mandate

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont said his administration was "taking a good hard look at the numbers" and would be making up its mind in less than a week whether to lift the mask mandate for schools in Connecticut. During a Wednesday news conference, the governor said that if he did relax the mandate, it would take the form of giving school districts control over masking at the local level.

The state has now surpassed 10,000 COVID-19 related deaths since the pandemic began two years ago, according to media reports, including WFSB 3 TV. As of Monday, the current number of deaths is at 10,010. The Connecticut Department of Public Health officially updates the state coronavirus death toll once a week, on Thursdays.

DPH has reported the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients in Connecticut has dropped to 935, down another 60 beds from their report on Tuesday, and 1,004 since the start of the downward trend on Jan. 12.

The state's daily coronavirus infection rate dropped one and a quarter percentage points overnight, according to the latest DPH data. The daily positivity rate reported Wednesday was 7.43 percent.

The daily coronavirus positivity rate is a function of the number of tests compared to the number of cases confirmed positive each day. Since Tuesday, 1,786 positive cases were logged, out of 24,024 tests taken. The numbers of tests and cases confirmed do not include those taken with at-home self-test kits.

According to data released Monday, 46.4 percent of those hospitalized in Connecticut with COVID-19, or 434 patients, are fully vaccinated.

Currently, the highest number of the hospitalized —296 — are in Hartford County.

See also: CT Weather: Ice, Snow Expected Friday: Here's How Much

• Connecticut Getting 6 More Weeks Of Winter, Groundhog Predicts
  
• Native American Nicknames Officially Scrapped By School District In CT
  
• DUI Driver Sentenced In Crash That Killed CT Minister

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.