It’s Official: Covid Emergency Ends

Gov. Ned Lamont joined hospital officials in New Haven to declare an official end to the Covid-19 public health emergency — and reflect on lessons for the next one.

That was the big takeaway from an hourlong panel discussion that Lamont hosted Wednesday morning in a second-floor auditorium at the Yale New Haven Hospital office building at 55 Park St. 

The presser took place one day before the Biden administration is set to let the Covid federal public health emergency expire more than three years after the Trump administration first put it in place. At the state level, Lamont plans to let Connecticut’s public health emergency declaration, which he first signed on March 10, 2020, lapse simultaneously with the federal.

“Covid is still more deadly than the flu. That’s a reality,” state Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said Wednesday. ​“But it is similar in the sense that it is becoming part of our regular life.” That means that Covid-19 should be considered ​“endemic” — and should be thought about and mitigated in a similar way to other respiratory viruses, including through likely annual vaccinations and boosters.

“Covid is part of our society and what we are living with. Three years into this, the virus is not going away. It will need to be managed,” she said.

Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Albert Ko, who formerly co-chaired the governor’s Reopen Connecticut advisory committee, agreed. ​“We’re out of the pandemic. The public health emergency is over. We have endemic transmission,” he said. But, he added, ​“we still have 200 Americans dying every day of Covid. We have a lot of Americans dying from influenza.”

That means that people in Connecticut should continue to protect themselves through getting the most up-to-date vaccinations. They should continue to stay home if sick. They should continue to mask up if around immunocompromised people worried about contracting the disease and in crowded areas at times of high rates of respiratory disease transmission. 

Lamont described Wednesday’s event as a bit of a ​“time tunnel” for him as he reflected on three years of responding to a public health emergency — while surrounded by so many of the people who helped lead his administration through the pandemic.

Seated across two tables at the front of the room were Lamont, Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) President Christopher O’Connor, Ko, YNHH Vice President of Community and Corporate Alliances (and former gubernatorial chief of staff) Paul Mounds, Connecticut Restaurant Association President and CEO Scott Dulch, state Office of Health Strategy (and former state social services and public health chief) Deidre Gifford, and Juthani. Also in attendance were Yale Senior Associate Provost for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (and former state Chief Operating Officer) Josh Geballe and Eversource Chief Communications Officer (and former gubernatorial spokesperson) Max Reiss and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz.

Some of Wednesday’s event saw Lamont and his current and former colleagues reflecting on key personal and professional moments from the pandemic. 

Lamont remembered the earliest disorienting and terrifying days of Covid in March 2020, worrying about hospitals overflowing with patients, rushing to meet the U.S. Surgeon General and getting advice that one shouldn’t wear masks and one should sing ​“happy birthday” while washing one’s hands. He described later protests led by barber shop owners looking to let their businesses stay open, and by hair stylists calling for government to ​“hair my voice” and keep them safe. He played one state-sponsored television advertisement featuring legendary UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma urging viewers to wear masks, and another showing the governor handing out free drinks to vaccinated restaurant customers while playfully chastising an unvaccinated patron, ​“Get the jab so you don’t get stuck with the tab.”

Ko recalled April 11, 2020, reviewing pathology slides of a fetus miscarried because of Covid and then taking a step outside of the morgue in New Haven so he could take a call from Lamont, who then asked him to co-chair the Reopen Committee. Mounds spoke about losing his grandmother to Covid back in May 2020 in his early weeks as chief of staff, all while working round the clock to help respond to and prepare for a still so-little-understood novel virus. Gifford described getting a call from the governor three years ago to the day this coming Friday — which also happens to be her husband’s birthday — and getting asked to lead the state’s public health department in addition to keeping her then job at the as the head of social services.

“It happened fast,” Lamont said about the early days and weeks and months of the pandemic. ​“We were learning on the fly.” He praised his team, and Connecticut healthcare providers, and residents across the state for doing everything they could to protect one another in such a difficult time.

Lessons For Next Time

Much of Wednesday’s presser, meanwhile, was dedicated to a recounting of lessons learned by state officials, public health experts, and healthcare providers during the pandemic — and a focus on how Connecticut is more prepared now for the next pandemic than it was in March 2020.

Lamont and Ko singled out the administration’s decision to prioritize vaccines for patients by age in the earliest days of the supply-constrained vaccine rollout. They said that decision likely saved a lot of lives, because age is one of the biggest predictors of a person becoming hospitalized or dying from Covid, and because the vaccines are so effective at warding off those worst outcomes.

Lamont also said the pandemic reinforced for him just how important it is for leaders to communicate clearly and often the latest scientific understanding of a novel disease, how best to protect oneself from it, and why state agencies are responding the way they are. ​“You can’t overcommunicate during a crisis, I learned,” he said.

While Covid is still with us, Gifford said, the difference in the state’s preparedness for such a pandemic between March 2020 and now is the difference of ​“night and day.”

She said the state has a much larger stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) now. Behind the group was a slide presentation stating that Connecticut has 1.3 million face shields, 16.1 million gloves, 9.3 million gowns, 6.4 million N95 masks, 9 million surgical masks, and 74,400 test kits.

She said that the state has a closer working relationship with local health departments and health districts. The state has invested $165 million in ventilation and other HVAC upgrades in schools, with another $150 million to come; that pharmacists are now better equipped to provide vaccinations. Outdoor dining has become a permanent fixture for many restaurants across the state, helping with air flow and reducing the likelihood of the spreading of respiratory viruses while people go out to eat.

She said that the state has invested ​“hundreds of millions of dollars” in mental health services for children and adults alike to help people reckon with the isolation imposed by the pandemic. The state department has ​“much better data infrastructure” now than then for the collection, analysis, and distribution of info about diseases. And state agencies now have much closer and better working relationships with hospitals, and with each other. ​“We have a much more coordinated state government,” she said.

“I used to think that healthcare was an individual right,” Lamont said. After the pandemic, he’s convinced, ​“healthcare is really a community right.” He stressed that vaccines and masks and other preventative measures are only effective if people actually use them. And he praised those who have spent years helping other survive the pandemic as ​“our greatest generation” who stepped up during a moment of crisis.

Ko and Juthani were asked during the Q&A portion of the presser about why they are confident that Covid no longer presents a pandemic-level threat given the many changes to the virus and sudden surges in transmission over the past three years.

Ko recognized that one of the most important lessons of Covid is to ​“expect the unexpected.” And yet, he said, such a wide swath of Connecticut’s population is vaccinated and each new strain of Covid, while being ​“highly transmissive,” is also ​“less virulent.” Vaccines have saved and will continue to save a lot of lives, he said. 

Juthani also pointed to the state’s larger PPE stockpile and the state’s increased ability to, say, ​“do sequencing in labs of wastewater” to quickly identify Covid outbreaks as Connecticut responds more quickly and effectively to future outbreaks.