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Lamont: Vaccine or Weekly Testing Required For State Employees and Teachers, But No Statewide Mask Mandate

August 19, 2021

State employees and teachers at the state’s schools must be fully vaccinated or agree to weekly testing effective Sept. 27, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Thursday afternoon at a news conference. A vaccine mandate, with no testing option, also will start on that date for state employees in hospital facilities and long-term care employees.

Despite increasing pressure to add a statewide mask mandate in public indoors spaces, Lamont left mask guidance to individual municipalities. He did, however, promise to reconsider depending on the Delta variant’s spread.

“We have some places that have low vaccination rates and the mask mandate is very appropriate,” he said. “I want people to have incentive to be vaccinated. If you’ve done that the right way, you don’t necessarily need everybody to wear a mask. But to be blunt about it, get back to me in a week. We’re going to continue to watch these numbers very carefully. If we don’t continue to have a flattening of the curve, it could change.”

The state previously extended the mask mandate in schools through Sept. 30, the date Lamont’s emergency COVID-19 executive powers expire. At that point, state lawmakers will either extend those powers or consider COVID-19 safety regulations on their own.

“I want people to look at our protection as layers of protection in totality,” says Dr. Ulysses Wu, Hartford HealthCare’s System Director of Infection Disease and Chief Epidemiologist. “So it’s not just about the vaccine or masking or social distancing. It is all of them.”

The Capital Region Council of Governments, which includes 38 Greater Hartford cities and towns, sent a letter to Lamont Thursday requesting a statewide mask mandate.

The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, a group of 22 cities and towns, met with Lamont via teleconference Wednesday and followed with a letter urging the governor to enact a statewide mask mandate in public spaces. Directors of three regional health districts, representatives of the Mohegan Tribe and Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and military liaisons from the U.S. Naval Submarine base and Coast Guard Academy also joined the 90-minute call.

“Because the transmission of COVID-19 does not stop at municipal borders or regional boundaries,” wrote Fred Allyn III, Ledyard’s mayor and chairman of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, in the letter to Lamont, “we also worry that imposition of a mask mandate on a town-by-town bases would not be as impactful as a statewide mandate.”

Earlier this month, Lamont said he would not revive a statewide mask mandate. Instead, he would allow towns and cities to establish their own mask regulations. New Haven quickly established a mask mandate, followed by Hartford, Bridgeport, Stamford, Norwalk and Danbury.

These municipalities also required masks in indoor public spaces:

  • Bethel.
  • Bloomfield.
  • Brookfield.
  • Danbury.
  • Hamden.
  • New Fairfield.
  • Redding.
  • Ridgefield.

These municipalities announced plans Thursday for local indoor masks regulations:

  • South Windsor.
  • East Windsor.
  • Easton.
  • Fairfield.
  • Manchester.
  • Westport.

Fairfield County this week became the fifth county considered an area high transmission by the CDC, defined as 100 or more cases per 100,000 people or a positivity rate of 10 percent or higher in the past seven day. Fairfield, with 103.46 cases per 100,000 in the seven-day period ending Aug. 16, joined New Haven, Hartford, New London and Middlesex counties in the high-transmission category.

Litchfield, Tolland and Windham counties remain in the substantial-transmission category, defined as 50 to 100 cases per 100,000 or a positivity rate between 8 and 10 percent in the past seven days.

The state’s test positivity rate was 3.37 percent Thursday.