“This is what will decide whether we’re able to keep the progress going,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said.
Ahead of the fourth of July holiday weekend, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and Senator Chris Murphy urged residents to get tested for COVID-19 and continue to practice social distancing.
“This is no time to give up on all of the personal practices one family at a time that has gotten us to this moment," Murphy said.
Hartford Department of Health Director Liany Arroyo says 13,000 residents have been tested for COVID-19. The city now has the only CVS rapid COVID-19 test in the state along with 10 other sites and mobile testing.
Murphy said Friday that federal funding for the rapid site will run out soon. He says if the Senate doesn't pass the House-backed Heroes Act when they return from recess in two weeks, billions of dollars that includes funding for testing centers in Connecticut may not come.
“Part of the reason why we aren’t testing more people in Connecticut isn’t because we don’t have enough testing centers or because we don’t have enough personnel but because we don’t have enough equipment,” Murphy said.
Murphy says swabs, cartridges and test kits are at a premium. He hopes proposed legislation that would put the federal government in charge of the supply chain for testing machines and kits will prevent tests from becoming a barrier.
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“In order to do 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 tests every single day in the state of Connecticut, we need more federal funding and we need a supply chain that produces all of the equipment all the cartridges all the swabs all the reagent,” Murphy said.
“At the beginning and through the middle of pandemic, I would say probably through early May we were seeing a lot of familial spread,” Arroyo said.
As Connecticut families prepare for a weekend together, state and health leaders reminding them to not compromise the improvements we’ve made so far.
