COVID-19 hospitalizations have decreased in Connecticut and the positive test rate stays above one percent, but several towns, particularly in southeastern Connecticut have seen recent outbreaks of the coronavirus. As a result, the governor is recommending those towns remain in Phase 2 and not move forward with Phase 3 of reopening.
These towns are Norwich, New London, Preston and Windham, according to Gov. Ned Lamont.
Lamont said the state will make a decision to give individual towns discretion on whether or not to move into phase 3 in the coming days.
He said a statewide COVID-19 map will be updated every Thursday. Towns with 15 cases per 100,000 people could choose to stay in phase 2 until they get below that threshold over a two-week average.
"We are seeing that some of the increases are pretty localized. We are not seeing a generalized uptick across the state," Dr. Deidre Gifford said.
New COVID-19 Numbers
U.S. & World
There are now 128 net hospitalizations. This is a decrease of 10 from Wednesday.
The positivity rate is 1.41% with 384 people testing positive for COVID-19. A total of 27,203 tests were performed since Wednesday.
The state reported a 1.6% test positivity rate on Wednesday. Connecticut's positivity rate has remained above 1% for most of the past few weeks and hospitalizations have increased to levels not seen since June.
Five additional deaths have been reported, bringing the state's death toll to 4,527.
Lamont said Connecticut averages about 7.5 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people.
