The Connecticut Department of Public Health is counting on the public's participation in a new track-and-trace program to limit the further spread of coronavirus.
DPH is working with Microsoft to develop "ContaCT," which should go live in mid-May.
Notes from Gov. Ned Lamont's Tuesday news briefing:
TRACK AND TRACE
DPH epidemiologist Kristen Soto describes ContaCT as an "at risk identificiation alert system."
She says that individuals who test positive for COVID-19 will be contacted by health officials and asked to fill out a questionnaire listing their contacts.
DPH will then ask the positive patients' contacts to self-quarantine.
"Without contact tracing, people might spread COVID-19 unknowingly," according to Soto. "Although people may choose to stay home if they're sick, often people might spread a disease either before they start to show symptoms, or if they're asymptomatic."
"We'll be able to rapidly share information across jurisdictions, so if a person resides in one jurisdiction, and has contact in another, that information can be seamlessly shared."
State officials are also rolling out a very ambitious testing program. State epidemiologist Dr. Matthew Cartter says a "benchmark" of progress would be conducting 50,000 tests per week by the end of May.
VERY CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM
Dr. Cartter says, "The trends are encouraging, but the number of cases that we still have are far too many and we should not think that we are 'through this' at this point in time."
"The New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey tri-state outbreak is still some of the largest COVID activity in the United States. We still have a ways to go."
Dr. Cartter repeated one of his more ominous predictions from the earliest days of the pandemic: "There is always a chance of a second wave (this fall). One of the things that we have learned about COVID-19 is that it's very unpredictable."
He says the state will be more well-prepared for a second wave, but he adds, "I don't think any of us look forward to reentering quarantine, again, but it's something that we need to be prepared for."
STATUS REPORT
--77 more deaths, for a total of 2,089
--hospitalizations fell by another 26, to 1,732 (Gov. Lamont points out that two-thirds of the state's hospital capacity is available)
--92,745 tests conducted (roughly 2.7% of the state population)
