Danbury has been Connecticut’s coronavirus capital for more than a month now, and that doesn’t seem to be changing.
The city has recorded more than 600 cases in the last six weeks, while consistently ranking as the municipality with the state’s most infections. On Wednesday, the city reported an additional 22 cases, more than some entire counties might see in a full week.
Despite numerous positive tests, Mayor Mark Boughton said this week, Danbury has seen few hospitalizations and no recent deaths. He said that could mean most new cases have come from younger residents.
“We have a fairly young community and a lot of multigenerational housing where there’s four or five people living together and one of the young adults brings it to the house and everyone gets it,” Boughton said. “In some cases you can literally see the spread going from house to house right down the street.”
Boughton said younger residents might be suffering from COVID-19 fatigue, having parties, playing soccer or other sports in large groups or just generally not adhering to guidelines for social distancing or gatherings.
“We’re seeing instances where small barbecues, say 10-15 people, are becoming spreaders,” he said. “Even though they are mostly outdoors, if people haven’t been tested they are still spreading it.”
Boughton also attributed the city’s ongoing outbreak to international travel, particularly among people going to and coming back from South American countries.
“You have an uncle who goes to Brazil for the summer and then comes back and brings it with him and next thing you know it’s spread to his family,” Boughton said.
Danbury has shut down its organized sports leagues, shifted all classes to remote learning and scheduled pop-up testing almost daily in different areas, he said.
Western Connecticut State University has returned to live classes recently after going to remote learning, but Boughton said the school has not been a source of COVID-19 cases.
Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said last week he was “disappointed” that Danbury’s caseloads had increased again in recent weeks and that the state would “flood additional testing” into the city and weigh other interventions.
Positivity, hospitalizations tick up
The state on Wednesday reported 155 additional COVID-19 cases out of 10,074 tests, for a positivity rate of about 1.5%. The state’s positivity rate has now exceeded 1% each day for more than two weeks, after several months below that threshold.
Connecticut currently has 73 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, up three from Tuesday and also up three from this time last week.
The state reported one additional coronavirus-linked death Wednesday, bringing its total during the pandemic to 4,497. The United States has now seen 201,459 COVID-19 deaths, according to the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University.
Alex Putterman can be reached at aputterman@courant.com.
