Health experts reported that new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have begun to plateau in Connecticut, as the state’s daily positivity rate of 21% on Wednesday is similar to rates seen in the past week.
Dr. Tom Balcezak, chief medical officer of Yale New Haven Health, warned at a virtual press conference that it’s still too soon to tell if the latest wave in the pandemic has reached its peak in hospitals.
“I think what we will see with this in the coming five or six days is, we will begin to see an ease up of total number of patients in hospital, but it will be a slow decline over the next four to six weeks,” Balcezak said.
At least 1,939 people remain hospitalized with COVID-19, just shy of the previous peak at 1,972 hospitalizations during April 2020. That daily hospitalization number continues to climb, but the daily increases are shrinking.
Still, Yale New Haven Health CEO Marna Borgstrom says the infectiousness of the omicron variant continues to impact hospital staffing.
“Last week, we hit a day where we had 700-plus members of our team across Yale New Haven Health out, which as you can imagine with the numbers of inpatients rising, was pretty difficult,” Borgstrom said.
Health experts are calling on the public to do their part by getting COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.
