The state said today its Westport COVID-19 case count was unchanged at 394 (377 confirmed and 17 probable) and deaths also unchanged at 23.
The CT positive test rate for COVID-19 increased to 2.4% today, the highest positivity since June 12, Gov. Ned Lamont said.
From late June through early September, the state kept its positivity rate mostly below the gold standard of 1%. As schools and universities reopened and the weather began to cool, that rate ticked above 1% — and stayed there for about a month, rarely falling below that threshold and never spiking up to 2%.
But today, the state reported that its daily positivity rate had jumped up to 2.4% — after 320 COVID-19 cases were identified out of a total of 13,398 test.
The state also reported an increase of 17 hospitalizations, for a total of 172 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. Connecticut hasn’t seen that many coronavirus patients hospitalized at once since June 19.
“It’s not totally unanticipated,” Lamont said at an afternoon news briefing. “We always anticipated there would be some sort of a flare-up again in October or November … but it is concerning.”
Single-day rate spikes, moving up or down, can be anomalies, the governor said, noting that last week Connecticut enjoyed one single-day rate as low as 0.7%.
Connecticut’s weekly average infection rate — a much more important COVID-19 metric for many health care experts — is still one of the lowest in the nation, he said, while other key benchmarks also remain favorable.
—CTMirror contributed reporting
