Greenwich Coronavirus: 'Tough Times Ahead' Over Next Few Weeks

GREENWICH, CT — First Selectman Fred Camillo and Greenwich Hospital CEO Diane Kelly continued to stress the need for residents to remain cautious as the number of overall cases of the coronavirus in town rose to 1,867 as of Wednesday afternoon.

That number represents an increase of 211 cases since last week, Camillo said during an update Wednesday. (To sign up for Greenwich breaking news alerts and more, click here.)

The number of active cases of the virus in town stands at 98 as of Wednesday, a slight decrease from the 110 active cases recorded last week, Camillo said. The number of residents who have died as a result of the virus rose this week to 59, an increase of one, Camillo said.

Camillo said he suspected the number of cases will continue to rise until mid-January, mainly due to the holidays and residents possibly gathering as a result.

"My totally uneducated guess would say that we may start to see a little bit of stabilization [in mid-January]," Camillo said. "We may also see the effects of the vaccinations that are starting to lead their way through our towns and our state, and that will only get better, but right now to think about that is foolish, because we have tough times ahead of us in the next few weeks."

Kelly noted the number of patients being treated for the virus in house at Greenwich Hospital declined from 38 to 34 over the past week.

"We're seeing patients come in," Kelly said, "but we're also seeing a good amount of patients being discharged."

On Tuesday, the hospital discharged six patients, Kelly said. She also noted there are currently two patients in the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, "a fraction" of the amount being treated there earlier in the year.

"I can't stress enough that yes, we are hitting a small wave," Kelly said. "It is nowhere near where it was six months ago, and we are discharging more patients sooner than we were."

Though encouraging, Kelly emphasized residents still need to be vigilant, especially for the next couple of months.

"We are at a very important point in this juncture," Kelly said. "People need to maintain their social distancing, wear their mask and wash their hands. If we can just get through these next couple of months, where hopefully we'll start to see the vaccine be available to more people in the population, we'll start to break the curve here."

As the country awaits emergency use authorization of a vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Kelly said the hospital is working "very closely" with the state department of public health and hopes to see the first round of doses of a vaccine available to them sometime next week.

"We have our teams ready to go and our processes in place," Kelly said, "so it's just simply a matter of when they'll be released to us. We're hopeful, but it will be dependent on when they release them."

Camillo said the town expects to begin releasing information about the vaccines to the public within the next few weeks, however he noted the town's health department is not yet sure how it would be distributed to people.

"We will certainly alert the public every step of the way until we're done with this," Camillo said.

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