CT marks end of covid emergency

Some 982,473 cases, 12,337 deaths and 1,157 days after declaring a public health emergency, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Wednesday that Connecticut's COVID-19 emergency will end.

The public health emergency declaration will expire on Thursday, May 11, Lamont said alongside public health leaders at a Yale New Haven Hospital press conference that emphasized how far Connecticut has come since the early days of March 2020 and how much more prepared the state is to weather future health crises.

Lamont described the feeling as "relief" and "pride."

"We’ve lived this like a black cloud," Lamont told reporters. "Our state came together like none other and faced some incredible headwinds those first 90 to 120 days when nobody had a clue and weathered that storm and saved a lot of lives thanks to the people of Connecticut."

Compared to a peak hospital census of 1,972 in April 2020, hospitalizations for COVID-19 are down to 51 Wednesday and deaths in the state have also plunged.

"Compared to where we were three years ago, we’re much better off," Lamont said. "We’re better prepared when it comes to vaccinations, better prepared for coming to underserved communities and making sure they have full range of health care benefits available, better prepared in terms of having masks and PPE necessary to get the job done."

Dr. Deidre Gifford, the executive director of the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy, said that as the emergency ends and the "new normal" begins, it's vital that residents continue testing, stay up-to-date with vaccinations, and stay at home or mask up when sick.

"COVID is still with us," Gifford said. "The difference … is that now we have the tools to treat the disease, but they’re only as good as taking advantage of them."

Lamont's order arrives in tandem with President Joe Biden's federal public health emergency termination, following the World Health Organization's determination that the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer a global emergency.

The shift out of the emergency phase means that Connecticut residents will see the expiration of pandemic-era policies enacted by the state and federal executive branch.

The cost of PCR tests, self-test kits, vaccines and boosters, as well as COVID-19 treatments such as Paxlovid and Lagevrio, will transition to a traditional health care coverage model, paid for by insurance plans or consumers, the administration said Wednesday.

Services from state-supported COVID-19 test sites, Department of Public Health homebound COVID-19 vaccination and mobile vaccination clinic programs will cease on June 30, and COVID-19 data reports will transition to the DPH's seasonal respiratory surveillance reporting program.

As a result of the expiration, program waivers for the Women, Infants, and Children Program will also end on Aug. 9.

Connecticut DPH Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said that "What we’re seeing is the evolution of COVID being internalized as another health condition that affects all of us."

"We are in a place where COVID is part of our society and is part of what we are living with. That does not mean that there aren't going to be times when we have resurgence," Juthani siad. "The virus will need to be managed. My hope is that it's going to be managed on a seasonal basis."

Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious diseases specialist and epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, said that while new and emerging COVID-19 variants follow a pattern of high transmissibility, their effects are much less harmful and severe.

"Their virulence is much lower than what we experienced during that terrible first wave," Ko said. "I think that's the kind of evolution that we will have these new variants that they may be highly transmissible, but they’re going to be less, less, virulent."

As viruses change, Juthani said DPH remains "prepared for the unexpected."

"When everybody else goes back to their regular lives, we continue doing that work so that we can be prepared for something that may be on the horizon," Juthani said. "Our PPE stockpile is one measure of that, (as well as) our ability to do sequencing in our lab of wastewater to be able to identify those new variants that might be coming, (and) continuing to do the surveillance and look for pockets where there may be disease emergence that may happen."

Gifford described the change in how prepared Connecticut has become for another health emergency is "night and day" from where the state was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today Connecticut has more than 25 million faceshields, gloves, gowns, masks and test kits in its PPE stockpile. Gifford said that among other changes, optimized ventilation in schools and health facilities, advanced data infrastructure in DPH, and improved collaborations with hospitals and long-term care facilities puts Connecticut in a better position to address future challenges.

"In the event of another pandemic, we’re ready to go," Gifford said. "You have a much more coordinated state government than you did at the start of the pandemic and that is better for our citizens, it's better for our preparedness and it's a better way to operate."

Reflecting on impact and toll

The everlasting impact of the pandemic, from the high death toll in Connecticut nursing homes to the personal loss of loved ones, was not lost on Lamont and the members of Wednesday's panel.

Lamont and others thanked the heroes of the pandemic, from health care workers to administrators, to essential workers and National Guard members who held the state together in the face of crisis.

"As we celebrate these days of gratitude, I know to our state's hospital personnel who put the lives of others in front of their very own every day, there are not enough days to express my gratitude to them for what they have endured and the lives that they have saved," Paul Mounds Jr., vice president of Community and Corporate Alliances for the Yale New Haven Health System and former chief of staff to Lamont, said.

"We also need to remember the toll of Covid-19 doesn't end today, and the end of this national emergency, whether it's learning loss in our schools, small business struggles, nonprofits that provide essential services that look to stay afloat. Covid took its toll not only on our state, but on our nation. But it made us collectively stronger together," Mounds added.

While the economy bounced back and economic conditions are improving, Lamont said he knows rebounding from the personal impact of the pandemic may take a little longer.

"I thought long COVID was respiratory, and I think that mental health issues are going to be with us for a while, you know, that sense of isolation … we still have a lot of effects of that going forward," Lamont said.

Yale New Haven Hospital respiratory therapists Sarah Kenyon, Rebecca Ford and Keli Tymeson said the end of the public health emergency "felt good."

While they don't know if health care workers will ever feel emotionally prepared for another pandemic, from a management perspective, the women said they feel ready to confront any future challenge.

During the pandemic Kenyon, Ford and Tymeson said things "changed constantly." At the height, the three contended with the possibility of a ventilator shortage. They didn't know whether their department would run out of emergency equipment, and patients in their care deteriorated at such an alarming rate that everything felt "surreal."

Walking out of the governor's press conference, those days seemed to be in the rearview mirror.

"It finally feels like it's some normalcy," Ford said.

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