Coronavirus Risk Tool Offers Insights Into Gathering Risks In CT

CONNECTICUT — Gov. Ned Lamont’s last-minute advice before Thanksgiving was to either stick to immediate household members or keep gatherings small in order to avoid a surge of cases in the coming weeks.

A new coronavirus risk assessment tool from the Georgia Institute of Technology estimates the odds that at least one person at a gathering is infected with the coronavirus. Lamont highlighted the tool at a new conference.

“If you have no more than 10 people at your table, and they are not all people you know… if it’s a random group in Fairfield County you’ve got a 24 percent chance one of those people are infected,” he said.

Connecticut reported another 43 coronavirus-related deaths over the weekend, which brought the state total up to 4,871.

Nearly 5,300 cases were reported over the weekend out of more than 109,000 tests. The positive test rate was 4.8 percent, which was less than earlier last week.

Net coronavirus hospitalizations grew by 27 patients up to 875, which was a slower rise than what was seen over the past week.

The tool assumes that there are five times more cases than are being reported based on seroprevalence antibody data.

The risk levels are as follows by county as of Nov. 23 for a gathering of 10 people:

• Fairfield County: 24 percent
• New Haven County: 23 percent
• Middlesex County: 18 percent
• New London County: 14 percent
• Hartford County: 20 percent
• Litchfield County: 19 percent
• Tolland County: 16 percent
• Windham County: 16 percent

“I don’t say this to scare you, I say this so you understand why we had a limit of 10,” Lamont said.

The risk level goes up significantly as gathering sizes increase. For a gathering of 20 the odds increase to 42 percent in Fairfield County.

Lamont generally asked people and stores on Black Friday to police themselves. Retail sales could be done safely so long as capacity is limited and social distancing and mask use is enforced, he said.

Volunteers needed

Connecticut launched a new volunteer tool called Step Up Connecticut to help connect volunteers with schools, testing locations and hospitals.

People can volunteer to be a medical or non-medical volunteer, including at testing sites. Connecticut is running more than 200,000 coronavirus tests weekly.

Substitute teachers are desperately needed. People can serve up to 40 days per year as a substitute if they don’t have a bachelors degree.