New Canaan is seeing COVID-19 virus spreading through small private gatherings rather than through outings to restaurants, according to the town’s health director.
Though dining out is the number-two cause of transmission statewide, “that’s not what I see here,” Jenn Eielson told members of the Health & Human Services Commission during their regular meeting, held Dec. 3 via videoconference.
The virus is spreading “when people let their guard down, when they only ‘have a few friends over,’ but those friends are from outside your house,” Eielson said.
She added, “And then the test is only a snapshot in time. So they get tested the day before Thanksgiving and then they find out two days later that they’re positive, now that 48-window is your infection period. Like on Thanksgiving I got test results back from Tuesday testing. I had to contact three families on Thanksgiving morning at 7 o’clock in the morning to stop them so they knew they had a positive person.”
The comments came during Eielson’s regular update, in response to a question about local transmission from Commissioner Tom Ferguson, and as New Canaan sees a surge in cases. The town saw 34 new positive cases of COVID-19 in the week ending Friday, according to the first selectman.
“With the holiday shopping season underway, we remind everyone that downtown New Canaan is a mask-required zone and also that the Governor’s Sector Rules require wearing a mask in any retail establishment,” First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said in a town-wide outcall Thursday, asking residents to “please do your part in controlling the spread of the virus by wearing a mask anywhere where you cannot social distance, washing hands frequently and avoiding large gatherings.”
As of last week, the town had not issued any tickets or fines for those violating mask-wearing rules downtown, officials have said.
During the meeting, Ferguson asked whether community spread is resulting from sports teams, parties or bars and restaurants. Eielson said, “It kind of runs the gamut.”
“There are some that the house gatherings or the dinner parties that the parents have, and then the parents get it and they give it to the kids and it transmits,” she said. “And it also goes the other way around, where it’s a teenager at a house high school party they’re teenagers, they get it and give it to the parents. So we’re seeing it at all levels. Nannies giving it to the families, going out to restaurants and things like that.”
Commissioner Russell Barksdale Jr., who is also president and CEO of Waveny LifeCare Network, said that among the organization’s employees, most cases trace back to their children.
“Our employees work in Stamford, Norwalk, Bridgeport, Danbury, all the areas, the vast majority of our group we trace it back to their children and either schoolmate or sporting event or something of that nature, and they caught it from their kids,” he said. “That their kids were home quarantining for some event, some exposure, and they caught it there. That’s been the vast majority of our cases, from our employees anyway.”