On 8 January 2022, Connecticut's state government asked nursing homes to start accepting COVID-positive patients being discharged from hospitals in the state to free up their bed space. We've pulled a number of news stories from recent months in the state to demonstrate Governor Ned Lamont's administration has full knowledge of the risks associated with their new public health policy for the population most vulnerable to fatal outcomes from exposure to coronavirus infections.
- New COVID-19 visitor policies in place at several Connecticut hospitals
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This 6 October 2021 report describes the restrictions several Connecticut hospital were placing on visits by friends and families of patients in response to an increase in COVID infections in the state.
New visitor policies are in place at several Connecticut hospitals, which now require visitors to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to enter building.
Nuvance Health, which runs Danbury, Norwalk, and New Milford hospitals, put the new policy in place.
Hospital officials will now need visitors to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours to enter.
Since this report, other Connecticut hospitals have instituted similar restrictions.
- 8 dead, 89 infected after Covid outbreak at Connecticut nursing home
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This 16 November 2021 report confirms the introduction of COVID infections in Connecticut nursing homes led to deadly results in the weeks preceding the report.
Eight residents of a Connecticut nursing home have died since the start of a coronavirus outbreak that has infected 89 others, officials said.
Twenty-two staffers and 67 residents of Geer Village Senior Community in North Canaan have tested positive for Covid since Sept. 30, according to a statement from the facility. North Canaan is on the Connecticut-Massachusetts border.
“Sadly, we have lost 8 residents with serious underlying health issues,” the statement said.
Connecticut's public health officials in the Lamont administration would be very familiar with this outcome.
- State Suspends In-Person Visits To Prison Due To High COVID Rates
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This story from 3 December 2021 indicates the Lamont administration was concerned enough about the potential risk of spreading COVID in the state's prison population to take steps to suspect visits by family and friends to protect the health of inmates. The following excerpt describes the state's policy:
The Department of Correction suspended visits by family and friends to all prisons due to Connecticut’s COVID-19 positivity rate which has been over 5% all week.
“Our COVID pandemic plan establishes a 5% community positivity rate as the threshold to temporarily suspend in-person social visits,” Karen Martucci, spokesperson for the agency, said. “The daily rate has been above 5% for the past four days.
Martucci said the visits would resume as soon as possible once the positivity rate goes back down. Connecticut and the DOC have seen a slow escalation in the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks.
Just over one month later, the Lamont administration broke with the practices in place at hospitals and which it put into practice at state prisons, that would specifically place known COVID-positive patients into nursing homes that they know can lead to deadly outcomes.
If former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance had not strangely chosen to drop his county's criminal probe of Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals without explanation on 3 January 2022, demonstrating no legal repercussions would follow from them, do you think Connecticut's Ned Lamont would have greenlighted his new Cuomo-esque policy?
