State health officials are reporting one additional New Canaan death in their daily updates on COVID-19 virus, bringing the town’s total to 40 since the coronavirus set in last year.
The cumulative number of New Canaan cases reported by the Connecticut Department of Public Health increased by 17 over the weekend, to 938. The figure represents 43 more than the prior Monday, according to DPH data.
The latest New Canaan death among COVID-19 cases had been reflected in Friday’s figures from the state. It’s unclear what was the age of the individual who succumbed, or whether that individual had underlying medical conditions.
Asked about it, New Canaan Health Director Jenn Eielson said she hasn’t seen the case reflected yet in the DPH Electronic Disease Surveillance System.
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during his most recent town-wide outcall, last Tuesday, that “most cases continue to be college-age young adults, teenagers and middle-age parents.”
Gov. Ned Lamont said during a press briefing Monday that the state has had 6,911 total fatalities among COVID-19 cases, up 92 since Friday. And though the state’s positive rate remains “relatively low,” Lamont said, the “black cloud” is that Connecticut has four more people “deemed infected by the super-infectious U.K. variant” of the virus. Regarding vaccinations, Lamont said the state is “racing to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we can” and that Connecticut is “doing pretty well” though demand still is far greater than supply.
“We have to do everything we can if we are going to win this race against the super contagious variant,” he said.
Asked whether any of the eight U.K. variant cases were from New Canaan, Eielson said she hadn’t been told so and that it’s unclear whether state public health officials would share town-specific information.
Eielson did note that New Canaan’s case numbers “have plummeted this past week from the previous week.”
New Canaan’s successful public access cable TV station—Channel 78, operated by New Canaan High School—announced on Twitter that the next two weeks would see NCHS ramp up to 75% learning in-person, a plan that district officials initially delayed due to a high number of positive cases among older students following the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said during Monday’s regular meeting of the Board of Education now “is the right time” to switch to the 75% model “given that our numbers have trailed down since the week after the holidays.”
“Going remote worked for that peak and now we have seen things going in the right direction,” Luizzi said during the meeting, held via videoconference.
“By all accounts our students were very happy to be there,” he said of NCHS students.
According to the New Canaan Public Schools continuously updated operations plan during the pandemic, Charting Our Course, just nine students across all schools were isolating as of Monday because they’d tested positive, as well as four staff members district-wide.
Perhaps we should track and highlight publicly the number of vaccine shots that have been delivered to the town and subsequently administered to town residents (either by the town or other parties – if we have that information). We should also get a better understanding from the State why the CDC indicates CT has more than 150,000 doses that have been distributed to the State but not yet administered https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
It doesn’t seem like New Canaan has a vaccine registration plan like many of the surrounding CT communities. There seems to be a need for more visibility and transparency. Anecdotally my senior citizen mother was able to register on line and receive her vaccine through her local health department. Has New Canann received a vaccine allocation for the 1B group yet?