Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and the superintendent of the city's school system, Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, held a news conference Monday to provide an update on the capital's coronavirus response.
Bronin said there are 49 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the city of Hartford and nine members of the police department have tested positive for coronavirus and one employee of the Department of Public Works employee has tested positive for the virus.
There were initially four officers who tested positive and another three believed to have contracted the virus through contact with the initial four outside of work, then two additional people developed symptoms and tested positive,
He said all of the people who have testified positive are staying home from work for awhile and the city is leaving some officers in reserve to make sure the city is protecting the force and and can reactivate if needed.
The mayor is calling on people in the city to remain at a social distance to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Bronin said the city is speaking with the University of Hartford about dormitory housing for first responders, the medical reserve corps has been activated to bring in medical professionals and efforts have been made to reduce the density at the city's shelters that serve the homeless.
One effort to reduce density in shelters was tp move around 75 people from homeless shelters to hotels.
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Bronin said all shelters now have an isolation space and city officials are looking to move more people from shelters to hotels.
Two quarantine centers have been set up and one person who was at a shelter and tested positive for coronavirus has been moved to one of them, according to the mayor.
The warming center, which was scheduled to close on March 31, will remain open indefinitely and city officials will run it as a 24-hour-a-day shelter to minimize the number of people going in and out.
He added that the overflow shelter for families will remain open past March 31.
The city of Hartford launched a distance learning program on Monday and the superintendent said her directive was to plan out 10 weeks, through the end of June.
She said 43 percent of students had access before the program started and they are working on reaching the additional students.
The school district has more than 4,000 Google classrooms and 90 percent of teachers have started them.
