Demand for COVID-19 Tests in Conn. Continues in New Year

The demand for COVID-19 tests in Connecticut is continuing in the new year.

COVID-19 cases are continuing to climb and the quest to get a test remains on the forefront of many people's minds. Over the past few days, there has been a lot of uncertainty about tests, but on Friday, hundreds of thousands of tests arrived to Connecticut.

Earlier this week, Governor Ned Lamont announced plans to distribute 3 million at-home COVID-19 testing kits statewide. A million would go to towns and cities and 2 million would go to schools.

On Thursday, a distribution delay was originally blamed on the supply chain, but then we learned the state had been outbid and the tests were going somewhere else.

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Yesterday, 426,000 tests arrived to a warehouse in New Britain.

The governor was apologetic as he walked the line at a testing site in New Britain Friday. Unable to secure millions of tests, the governor was able to announce that they did get more than 400,000 overnight.

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"There were a lot of agreements to get tests and they were getting swooped up, sometimes the feds picked them up, sometimes they got rerouted to somebody else," Governor Lamont said.

Connecticut received a shipment of at-home rapid COVID-19 tests early Friday morning, according to the governor. He said the state has received 426,000 tests and there are more to come, including today.

"We really need to have an investigation over the what occurred because that was really the biggest hoax that was played on the state of Connecticut," House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora added.

It's unclear if the tests that were delivered were part of the original 3 million that were promised.

To put some numbers into perspective, while 426,000 tests sounds like a lot, based on the amount of tests the state has done, the shipment would only last about 10 days.