In the waning hours of the state's long-running COVID public health emergency, Gov. Ned Lamont reunited with current and former members of his senior staff and public health team to hold one last news briefing about the virus and to proclaim the success of his team's mitigation efforts.
While noting that COVID will continue to be with us, the governor says that case numbers are drastically down and that state's tactics under his leadership helped saved lives.
The public health emergency which allowed the governor to issue what turned out to be reams of executive orders to address the crisis was declared March 10, 2020, with bipartisan support from the state legislature. It expires this Thursday, May 11, as the corresponding federal emergency also runs out.
"These efforts made a difference," said the governor. "I don't like the narrative out there that the virus just took its course, didn't make a difference."
Gov. Lamont and staff members cite mitigation efforts, including masking orders and an indoor dining shutdown. They also also cite the state's vaccine eligibility rollout: three million Connecticut residents have received at least one shot.
State Public Health Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani says that after deaths and case loads spiked in the first months of the pandemic in 2020, "We had infection prevention strategies both in our schools, in long-term care, in hospitals that helped get us through the beginning of the next wave, and then we had vaccinations that started in November of 2021."
While the administration is proclaiming success in its mitigation efforts, it is not proclaiming the threat posed by COVID to be over.
"The emergency may be ending, but there's no doubt that COVID is also still here, and unfortunately it seems it's here to stay," says Juthani. "This virus is part of our life, but we have the tools regarding diagnosis, vaccination, therapeutics, to manage an infectious disease like we do other infectious diseases."
The governor saluted the staff members, some of whom joined him on stage at his news conference at Yale New Haven Hospital. They include noted Yale epidemiologist Dr. Albert Ko, who co-chaired the governor's Reopening Advisory Group; former chief of staff Paul Mounds, who is now a vice president at Yale New Haven Health; former acting Public Health commissioner Dr. Deidre Gifford and current commissioner Juthani.