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"The increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Connecticut has grown slower than expected Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday, giving the state more time to plan for a pandemic that researchers say could kill as many as 5,500 residents by August.  At his daily briefing on the coronavirus response, Lamont said there were 17 more deaths and 79 more hospitalizations linked to the virus Monday. A total of 206 state residents who tested positive for the coronavirus have died, he said, while 1,221 more are currently hospitalized. Whereas officials feared deaths and hospitalizations would rise exponentially, recent increases have been steep but mostly linear. This positive trend could signal the success of social distancing measures, Lamont said. “It gives us capacity to plan,” he said. “Our health care system is bending but not breaking.\" Due in part to an unusually high number of tests reported to the state, Connecticut had 1,231 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, Lamont announced, bringing the state’s total to 6,906. Despite the slower-than-expected spread of COVID-19 in Connecticut, projections for the coming months remain dire. University of Washington researchers who prepared a statistical model for Connecticut have revised their estimates, forecasting nearly 5,500 deaths here by August after previously projecting fewer than 1,100. It is unclear why their previous predictions for Connecticut changed so drastically in recent days, but the researchers said the updated model is informed by additional data on death rates and peaks around the world and is also more accurate at predicting the effects of various types of social distancing. The state Department of Public Health has predicted the state will need about 12,000 hospital beds at peak outbreak, far more than local hospitals currently have available. COVID-19 is expected to peak in Fairfield County in mid-to-late April, then in Hartford and New Haven counties in May and in the eastern part of the state after that, Lamont told WNPR’s “Where We Live” program. State public schools may remain closed through the end of the school year, Lamont said, because the pandemic is likely to extend “into June.\" Lamont added that control measures would likely continue on some level through May. Lamont said officials hope to have data later this week on patients who have recovered after being hospitalized with COVID-19. On Monday, Hartford HealthCare chief clinical officer Ajay Kumar estimated 25% to 30% of inpatients, or about 80 in total, have recovered and been released. That does not include people who came to the emergency room but were not admitted because their symptoms were mild, he said. Mayor Luke Bronin wears a face mask made by his mother at a COVID-19 press conference in Hartford on Monday, April 6.  State officials spent the weekend preparing to open the Westfield Care &amp; Rehab Center in Meriden as the first long-term care facility in the state for nursing home patients who have tested positive for COVID-19. The facility was closed in November, meaning that much of its infrastructure and equipment were still on site. The facility has about 120 beds. An administrator has been picked for the COVID-19 only facility and officials are seeking at least 60 health care workers to staff it, sources said. State officials hope to move the first COVID-19 patients into the home by the middle of this week. Because few providers have volunteered as COVID-19 only facilities, the state is also looking at recently closed facilities in East Hartford, Litchfield, Enfield and New London as possible vacant sites that could be ramped up quickly. The state’s 213 nursing homes will get about $35 million from the Department of Social Services over the next three months to cover operational costs associated with the coronavirus pandemic. The state will also pay $600 a day per patient to any facility that becomes a COVID-19 only nursing home, to help pay for increased wages for workers. The number of patients dying in nursing homes has increased considerably over the past week. On Monday, Lamont said there had been 65 deaths in nursing homes, with another 142 residents currently hospitalized. A protestor demanding the release of Connecticut prisoners to help flatten the COVID-19 curve demonstrates outside the Governor's Residence in Hartford. More than 50 cars effectively shut down Prospect Avenue after stopping for an hour in front of the Governor's Residence to chant and display signs.  Connecticut’s inmate population has dipped to its lowest level since 1993, Department of Corrections Commissioner Rollin Cook said Monday, hours after protesters at the governor’s mansion demanded the release of inmates in the state’s jails and prisons amid the coronavirus outbreak. Cook said the inmate population has dropped by 727 since March 1, the largest one-month decrease in the state’s history. “I would not classify our efforts as a mass release,” Cook said. “However, the early focused attention on releases is evident.” Cook said his department had worked to release low-risk offenders “without circumventing protocols.” He did not say how many of the 727 inmates had been released early. Families of incarcerated residents formed a caravan of more than 50 cars outside the Governor’s Residence Monday, asking Lamont to release inmates from jails and prisons, which are considered particularly susceptible to the spread of COVID-19. Lamont said Monday that the families should “give me a call” instead of protesting. The state Department of Labor is scrambling to handle a surge in unemployment claims due to the coronavirus pandemic. The agency is facing 20 times the normal amount of claims. “We’re throwing people at this, we’re trying to do better to get that backlog down,\" Lamont said. \"[Commissioner] Kurt [Westby] and his team are working on a technical fix that I hope we’ll be able to fix in the next few days so we’ll be able to get those tests out in short order.” Since March 13, the Connecticut Department of Labor has received 282,764 claims, a spokesperson said Monday afternoon, with 30,000 claims coming over this past weekend. Lamont noted that unemployment checks will be retroactive, meaning people who have filed claims will receive the full amount they’re owed, regardless of how long the checks are delayed. The administration will speed up delivery of unemployment checks so they arrive “within two weeks,\" Lamont said Monday morning, noting that there is currently a lag of five to six weeks for the checks. Yale-New Haven Hospital healthcare workers photograph a large \"thank you\" sign from K&J Tree Service. The tree company also had a large American flag hanging from a crane.  \n\n\n Lamont signed two new executive orders Sunday. One protects health care professionals and health care facilities, including hospitals, nursing homes and field hospitals, from lawsuits for “acts or omissions undertaken in good faith in support of the state’s COVID-19 response.” Connecticut statutes already provide similar protections for other first responders, including police, firefighters and emergency medical technicians. New York and New Jersey have approved similar orders. The order does not protect health care facilities from being sued for criminal actions, fraud, acts of malice or gross negligence. “This order is meant to provide as much flexibility as possible for all of our health care facilities addressing this extraordinary pandemic ... to [give] the best possible care under the circumstances,” said Max Reiss, a spokesman for Lamont. Another order signed by Lamont on Sunday seeks to protect COVID-19 patients from surprise medical bills for emergency services classified as out-of-network by their insurance providers. It also protects uninsured patients who seek treatment for the virus. Days after Lamont announced that Stamford-based Sema4 would begin processing COVID-19 tests, the company said Monday that it would run about 6,000 per week, with results in as little as 24 hours. The state has worked to expand its testing capacity in recent weeks, contracting with Jackson Laboratories in Farmington and now Sema4 to process samples collected at hospitals and other sites. The state had typically reported between 1,000 and 2,000 new test results in a given day, before announcing more than 3,000 Monday. “With our proximity to the epicenter of the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, we desperately need increased testing capacity and reliable results reported as quickly as possible,” Connecticut’s chief operating officer, Josh Geballe, said in a statement. “We deeply appreciate the investment made by Sema4 to quickly ramp up COVID-19 testing to help us both increase testing rates in the short term and advance our understanding of this coronavirus so we can better manage and track SARS-CoV-2 infections in the longer term.” Connecticut ranks only 15th among states in per-capita testing despite having one of the nation’s largest coronavirus outbreaks. In other news: Courant staff writers Dave Altimari and Emily Brindley contributed to this report. Alex Putterman can be reached at aputterman@courant.com."
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