Lamont Waiting On CDC Guidance Before Lifting School Mask Rule

CONNECTICUT — State government is still at least two weeks away from providing school districts with guidance regarding mask-wearing protocols for the next school year.

That's when Gov. Ned Lamont said he expects to receive new direction from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Up until a couple of weeks ago, you thought we'd be out of the woods by September," Lamont said during a news conference this week. "But now you see the Delta variant, you see what's going on in Australia, you see what's going on in Israel, you see what's going on in Britain, not to mention Arkansas and L.A., so we're going to have to make up our minds on that a little bit later."

In May, the CDC's guidance that said fully vaccinated people need no longer wear masks, indoors or out, signaled the de facto end of the pandemic for many Americans. The incursion stateside of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, discovered first in India, risks upending all that.

On Monday, health officials in Los Angeles County issued a statement recommending that “everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure.”

The Delta may account for 90 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the European Union by the end of August, according to Science magazine. It's also causing surges in Russia, Indonesia, and many other countries. In the U.S., its prevalence is now estimated to be at least 14 percent, and two weeks ago week the CDC upgraded it to a variant of concern.

Instances of the Delta variant in Connecticut are up eight cases as of Thursday, to 43, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Public Health.

School superintendents, and families, have begun to grow impatient, not knowing what coronavirus mitigation protocols will be required in September. Current state mandates requiring schools to submit plans on how they will reopen must now conform with the existing mask mandate, to parents' concern and confusion.

Lamont reiterated the CDC guidelines that vaccinated people need not wear masks, and said that Connecticut would "keep with that protocol." But the coronavirus Delta variant is twice as transmissible as the garden variety alpha, and there are still pockets of largely unvaccinated communities throughout the state, he said.

"Close to 80 percent of our adults have been vaccinated.," Lamont said. "If we can get another 10 percent of our population vaccinated, I'm not worried."

Alongside mobile clinics, teams of state health workers have been sent into areas where vaccination rates are lagging, according to the governor.

"We're doing house calls now, we're going door-to-door," he said.

Lamont said data suggested that low vaccination rates were coinciding with areas of low housing security, "and we've got to a better job of making sure they can stay in their home."