"I can't believe we're already talking about the new school year coming up in about a month," said Gov. Ned Lamont on Monday.
The back-to-school talk is actually right on time, but if it seems darker than usual, it might be because the surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant has parents and students asking tough questions.
The Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) puts the COVID positive test rate at 3.2% for the last 72 hours. That brings the 7-day average up to almost 2.9%, the highest since mid-April. As the numbers rise, doctors say they're seeing younger patients getting sicker from the Delta variant than from previous strains.
Scheduled to speak at Haddam-Killingworth High School about new state funding for special education, the governor also addressed preparations for the second school year of the global pandemic.
"A lot of parents are nervous," says Lamont. "But I want you to know that we had our schools open last September. Overwhelmingly, they got back to school safely. One of the safest places to be is in a classroom in Connecticut."
Some parents and students are on edge about whether a mask mandate in schools will be, once again, considered essential to maintaining that safety.
A hint on where DPH stands on this may have come over the weekend, when it announced it "strongly" recommends indoor mask use in public places (for everyone over 2 years old) to reduce community transmission.
Dr. Ulysses Wu, System Director for Infectious Disease at Hartford Healthcare, explains why he feels mask-wearing in schools is critical: "Our first line of defense is vaccinations. That is still our pathway out. The next two steps are social distancing and masking. Social distancing is going to be difficult, especially in schools, and so masking, I think, is going to be the way out of this, to prevent (transmission), especially for those who have not been vaccinated."
The governor says his call on masks in schools is due within the next few weeks: "I can't promise you what the world's gonna look like in a month from now. I do know that we still have one of the lowest infection rates in the country."
Complicating the matter, the governor's emergency powers expire at the end of September.
