Blumenthal and Murphy, at far left and right (and below), with health care workers and advocates Wednesday on the Green.
Paul Bass Photos
Feel better. Start following your own government’s rules. Send more support to community health care workers to protect disadvantaged people, too.
Connecticut’s two U.S. senators sent those three pandemic wishes to President Donald Trump Wednesday from the New Haven Green.
“I wish the president a rapid recovery,” Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters when asked about Trump’s current bout with Covid-19.
Meanwhile, Murphy continued, “This president and the White House continue to violate its own agency’s rules and guidelines. It’s really hard to ask Americans to set the example if the president isn’t willing to do it himself.
“The president’s been very clear from the beginning. He doesn’t believe in masks. He chides people who show up at the White House wearing masks and tells his own staff to take them off. He refuses to engage in social distancing. The president has modeled the worst behavior from the beginning from the very beginning of the pandemic.”
Part of the reason the U.S. lags beyond most other nations in tackling Covid-19, he argued, is that “we have a president who is behaving really badly.”
Murphy made the comments at the tail end of a press conference fellow Sen. Richard Blumenthal organized on the New Haven Green with local frontline workers to call for more federal aid to community health care centers. Murphy then issued a similar call at a separate press event at Fair Haven Community Health Care.
“No one should be surprised. But everybody should be shocked by the president’s reckless and irresponsible actions” in continuing to discourage mask wearing and social distancing, urging people not to fear to Covid-19, and exposing others in government to the disease, Blumenthal echoed at the event on the Green.
Blumenthal (pictured) also accused the president of “creating chaos” by endangering prospects for Congressional passage of a second round of pandemic economic relief.
He and Murphy urged swift passage of a second stimulus bill that would include more money for community health workers helping people in lower-income communities access care, obtain emergency food, and learn how to avoid contracting Covid.
Noting that the Covid-19 death rate is two and half times higher in Connecticut’s communities of color, Blumenthal called the community-health workers a “critical link,” “unsung heroes,” “champions in the trenches” who are “risking their lives and reporting for duty.” They also conduct contact tracing and connect sometimes distrustful people with doctors.
Ted Littleford
“Many of our clients were already struggling and just getting by” before the pandemic, said Katia Astudillo (at left in photo), a community health care worker with New Haven’s nonprofit Project Access. Now “many of our clients have lost their job. They’re having to choose between buying food, paying their rent, and paying utilities.”
Even if a stimulus bill remains stalled, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar can on his own authorize the release of more money to local community health centers, Blumenthal argued. He called on Azar to do so.
View From Fair Haven
Courtney Luciana Photo
Murphy and DeLauro (center) with other officials at Fair Haven Health.
Murphy then joined U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and State Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney at an event at Fair Haven Community Health Care, where participants focused again on the need for Congress to pass a new pandemic stimulus package.
In this case they singled out the need for money to flow to community Covid-19 testing sites — like Fair Haven Health.
Suzanne Lagarde, CEO of Fair Haven Community Health Care, led a discussion with officials in efforts to encourage residents to keep being tested.
From March through June, 1,894 patients were tested at the center, 421 of whom came out positive, leading to a 22.23 percent positivity rate, Lagarde reported. From June to present, 6,288 patients were tested; 156 patients tested positive, constituting a 2.48 percent positive rate.
“We are out in the community doing pop-ups. That is a critical part of what we do,” said Lagarde (pictured), “including places like Bella Vista, churches, synagogues, churches, C‑Town Supermarket, our walk-up adjacent, and many other places. In addition, we were at nursing homes assisting like Mary Wade Home when they had a large outbreak. Today Mary Wade Home is Covid free.”
“Fair Haven Community Health is one of the founding community health centers. They’ve always been so involved in community health. First and foremost, we need to make sure that community health centers have the funding that we need in order to forward,” DeLauro urged.
“Fair Haven Community has been such a beacon of light for this neighborhood,” Looney added, after DeLauro.
Paul Bass Photo