Alicia Meyer

Officials: Some New Canaan Parents Advocating ‘Don’t Test, Don’t Tell’ COVID-19 Policy

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Members of social media groups in New Canaan are advocating for people to not have their children tested for COVID-19 virus or to withhold positive test results from the schools, officials said last week. The parents in the groups want to avoid the district’s protocols about kids needing to stay out of school for a certain number of days after testing positive and wearing a mask for a period of time upon returning, Health & Human Services Commission member Alicia Meyer said during the appointed body’s May 5 meeting. “There are parents actively advocating for not testing and/or testing but not telling the school,” she said during the meeting, held via videoconference. “So that their kids don’t stay home for the full quarantine and don’t mask upon return.”

The comments came following Health Director Jenn Eielson’s regular update on COVID-19. In it, Eielson said that “cases are clearly on the rise,” adding that “to keep everyone in perceptive,” hospitalizations and COVID-related deaths “are still remaining steady.” She cited a statistic that hospitalizations in the state were up over 2,100 in January and were at 245 as of the governor’s most recent report this month.

Alicia Meyer

Health & Human Services Commission Chair: Masks ‘Are Still Important’

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Mask-wearing, after serving as the first line of defense during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, now serves as the second line of defense behind vaccines, according to the chair of the New Canaan Health & Human Services Commission. 

A topic of much debate in New Canaan, the masks “are still important,” according to Dr. Harrison Pierce, a local pediatrician for more than four decades, 

“We know how they function,” Pierce said during the Commission’s regular meeting Thursday, held via videoconference. “They filter the droplets, the aerosol, and they do this with varying degrees of efficiency,” from cloth masks to surgical masks and N-95 masks. “If you are uninfected and you are wearing a mask, you decrease the risk of getting COVID by about 67%, and if you are infected and wearing one you decrease of giving it to others by about 75%,” Pierce said. “And if you are both wearing it there is about a 92% decreased risk of getting sick with COVID.”

The comments came during a a discussion on mask-wearing that Pierce said he added to the appointed body’s agenda after hearing from State Rep. Lucy Dathan (D-142nd) and Commissioner Jenn Hladick on whether the Commission had a position with respect to masks. 

The issue has made headlines recently, as Gov. Ned Lamont has asked the state legislature to extend his executive powers, including with respect to an order in which the governor empowers the Department of Public Health commissioner to set rules about what types of buildings require mask-wearing (including schools). In New Canaan, parents have spoken out at recent Board of Education meetings, and the school board is scheduled to meet at 2:30 p.m. Friday, in part to vote on whether to send a letter to Lamont and others in Hartford requesting “local control” in COVID-related decision-making.

Alicia Meyer

Health Director: State Funding for New Canaan’s Public Health Nurse Now Uncertain

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New Canaan’s health director said Thursday that state officials “dropped a bombshell” this week regarding funding for a nurse whose responsibilities include administering vaccine. Hired in November through an Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity or “ELC” grant, the public health nurse has helped with COVID-19 virus testing, contact tracing and vaccinations amid the pandemic, and is to work on program expansions such as in telehealth, Health Director Jenn Eielson told members of the Health & Human Services Commission during a regular meeting. “Obviously, I cannot lose my public health nurse—there’s going to have to be a solution to that,” she said during the meeting, held via videoconference. 

“With the potential of another wave coming in the fall with the Delta variant—because even though we have very high vaccination rates, we still have the unvaccinated, the under-12 group that can’t get vaccinated yet,” Eielson added. “And there’s no timetable on that until ‘some time in the fall,’ is all we kept hearing for the under-12.”

The comments come as town officials decide how to spend $6 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding that’s been allocated to New Canaan. One specific category that the funds may be applied to is “public health expenditures” and bolstering local public health response, officials have said.

ABC House of New Canaan

Podcast: ABC House of New Canaan President Alicia Meyer

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Alicia Meyer, president of A Better Chance of New Canaan, known locally as ABC House. Meyer tells us about the organization’s mission, how its scholars come to the New Canaan program, how ABC House navigated this past year of pandemic-related restrictions, and what she learned from a webinar series that ABC scholars and alumni put on last year in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. Here’s a link to “A Chance To Unpack,” a webinar series presented by ABC students and alumni last year that we talk about during the interview. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Alicia Meyer

COVID-19: School Parents Concerned About New Canaan Families Extending Vacations During Week of ‘Remote Learning’

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Many New Canaan parents are concerned that some families are undermining efforts to keep the public schools safe by extending their vacations this week instead of learning from home as a post-holiday safeguard against the spread of COVID-19 virus, officials said Thursday. Theoretically, this week of school was designated for district-wide remote learning to give New Canaan families time, after returning from travel, to get tested and for COVID symptoms to surface, according to Health & Human Services Commissioner Alicia Meyer. Yet “unfortunately, a lot of people took it as an opportunity to extend their vacations,” Meyer said during the appointed body’s regular meeting. “At Thanksgiving, New Canaan Public Schools were requiring that kids who travel be tested when they got back to Connecticut, after they travel,” Meyer said during the meeting, held via videoconference. “But now, after Christmas, the requirement is just within the 72 hours of travel, so before they left their destination.”

She continued, “I have been getting a lot of emails from people concerned that kids are still on vacation right now, are going to be tested in Florida or Turks-and-Caicos or wherever they are, another day of vacation, fly home, crowded customs hall, and then roll right back into school, because they were tested before they left the vacation destination.”

“People just are concerned about this,” she added.