At the July 28 Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting in Deep River, health officials from the Connecticut River Area Health District (CRAHD) provided an update on COVID-19, echoing recent communications from the state on seeing a slight uptick of new cases, especially in the younger age brackets.

“So, we’re not seeing any outbreaks like you may be seeing in the news in other parts of the country, [but] it’s still concerning [that we are] starting to see more cases in Connecticut as we did a week or so ago,” said CRAHD Director of Health Scott Martinson. “And also, the positivity rate is starting to go up.”

Martinson referenced Governor Ned Lamont’s regional travel advisory that started last month, which directs travelers from states with a high rate of COVID-19 infection to self-quarantine for a 14-day time period.

“I just looked at today’s data, it looks like they added 35 states now on the travel ban,” said Martinson. “That is also very concerning, because that is a decent metric to see what is happening throughout the country, so that is not good news.”

Martinson indicated, as Lamont and Department of Public Health (DPH) Acting Commissioner Dr. Deidre S. Gifford had expressed in a press release on July 28, that rates of infection are increasing among young adults.

“All this as it heads into school reopenings, it really creates a lot of challenges, not only for our community but every community,” Martinson said.

A graphic embedded in the state’s press release from July 28 showed individuals in the 20- to 29-year old age bracket as having the highest rate of infection per 100,000 people during the July 12 to 18 testing period. The second highest rate was for individuals aged 80 or above.

As of July 27, Connecticut Open Data showed a total of 1,640 laboratory-confirmed cases with one death in the 10- to 19-year-old age bracket and a total of 6,045 laboratory-confirmed cases with four deaths in the 20- to 29-year-old age bracket.

Martinson discussed the virus’s potential impact on in-person classes for this school year.

“I still think the governor has done a good job with the phased reopenings,” said Martinson. “I don’t anticipate anything will be open before school is open though, as far as increased measures or capacities in restaurants, and I would hedge to guess that it won’t take long before schools potentially close once they open as the criteria to when you have a positive [case], it is kind of subjective right now. Is it two days [of school closure]? Is it 10 days? Do you just isolate that cohort [of students]? Do teachers have to go home? So, there is a lot more to come on the schools, and very fluid.”

Martinson also pointed to Lamont and Gifford’s July 28 press release in which they referenced youth sports team travel to states on Connecticut’s travel advisory list.

“They’re traveling to these infected states [and] they are coming back to Connecticut and they’re not quarantining,” said Martinson. “This totally defeats what we’re trying to do. It’s undermining our future efforts.”

Under the governor’s order, all individuals who travel out-of-state must complete a form upon re-entry into Connecticut and self-quarantine for 14 days. Sports teams that travel to states listed on the governor’s travel advisory must cancel practices and competition for 14 days upon their return or face a $1,000 penalty.

Sherry Carlson, a public health nurse for CRAHD, reported new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Well, some good news, is that the latest findings from CDC are that we are not seeing any recurrent of infection of over 90 days since [the] beginning of people getting positive [testing results],” said Carlson. “They haven’t seen anybody get re-infected.

“We still don’t know the length of time that we get immunity for. They also changed some of the guidance for taking people out of isolation. [It] is still 10 days, because that is how long it can be extrapolated and grow into an infectious disease, but now you only have to be without a fever for 24 hours and an improvement in symptoms for 24 hours, so that is a decrease as well,” she said.

CRAHD is continuing to conduct contact tracing, although there has been some delay in getting results, according to Carlson.

After First Selectman Angus McDonald asked about the different waves of the virus, both Martinson and Carlson commented on its projection.

“It could just be a continuous line going...up, but that would be depending on how well we’re doing [in terms of] are people still wearing their masks? Did they get a flu shot? Are they social distancing? So, it’s very subjective, but yeah, we’ve got a long road ahead of us,” said Martinson.

Carlson added, “The other thing is that we know people are going to continue to get sick until we have herd immunity from this because it’s something we’ve never had before, so nobody has immunity, so you’re gonna get everybody continuing, as they open up and people are exposing themselves to each other, you know they’re still going to get positive cases. The other piece of it is that most of the people that I’m in contact with [and who have tested positive for COVID-19] are asymptomatic, so, they are not sick, sick people like we had in March and April and May.”

Most of the asymptomatic cases are revealed during routine testing at nursing home facilities or police departments, she said.

With continued spread of the virus in Connecticut, Martinson cautioned during the meeting that it’s necessary “to stay vigilant…This is a marathon [and] we’re not close to done.”

“The only good metric out there right now is the fact that a vaccine may be here before we know it, but that said, you’re still looking into the latter end of 2021, so people gotta bank on wearing a mask [and] social distancing for probably another eight months to a year, and that is hard for people to swallow. It’s going to be very challenging out there, so we’ve got to do what we can as a community,” he said.