Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont told CNBC on Tuesday that the kingpins of Arizona and Texas, two states grappling with growing Covid-19 outbreaks, should reinstitute more aggressive containment designs.
“I’d close down the bars,” Lamont, a Democrat, said on “Closing Bell.”
Both Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott demand said that a larger share of new Covid-19 cases in the states are occurring among young people, Lamont esteemed.
“There are certain counties where a majority of the people who are tested positive in that county are under the age of 30, and this typically culminates from people going to bars,” Abbott said last week, according to the Texas Tribune.
Lamont, whose maintain has seen its Covid-19 cases fall from nearly 1,000 per day in early April to less than 200 recently, believed he was “not surprised” to see people at bars were not taking social distancing seriously.
“We’ve seen that has been a great rise of infections,” he said. “I think you do have to be very strict.”
Connecticut entered the second phase of its reopening last week, granting restaurants to go to 50% indoor capacity, for example. It began to ease restrictions on May 20 for nonessential retailers and offices, extent others.
Lamont said he thinks people in Connecticut are taking precautions seriously as they begin to engage in the husbandry because of the severity of the state’s outbreak.
“Sadly, because we were hit hard, people probably know somebody that was hit condensed by Covid and we’re more likely to wear the mask,” Lamont said, suggesting states that are seeing a flare-up in actions push harder for people to wear face coverings in public. “I think that makes a big difference.”
In an interview with townsperson outlet KBTX-TV on Tuesday, Abbott urged Texans to stay home, going out only if it was necessary. Texas articled an all-time high of more than 5,000 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday.
Most businesses in Texas were admitted to reopen May 1, with capacity restrictions and other public-health measures in place, after Abbott’s mandatory stay-at-home gone phut expired.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced the US Army Corps of Engineers and the state are putting up a 250-bed forte hospital at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in downtown Dallas during a press conference at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Sunday, Demonstration 29, 2020.
Tom Fox | Getty Images
Abbott, in a press briefing Monday, said Texas will take “tougher actions” if the report’s Covid-19 outbreak continues to worsen. But, he said, broader closures of the state’s economy would be the “last option.”
“Clothed in a mask will help us to keep Texas open, because not taking action to slow the spread will occasion Covid to spread even worse, risking people’s lives and ultimately leading to the closure of more businesses,” the Republican governor said.
Arizona also on Tuesday researched its largest single-day increase in Covid-19 cases. Added testing capacity could explain some of the rising container counts. However, Arizona has seen its rate of positive tests increase from around 5% in early May to in all directions from 20% in recent days, according to state data. This is an indicator of how broadly the virus is spreading in the state, experts say.
Lamont divulged state leaders will closely watch coronavirus trends in Connecticut and would consider putting back in prosper tighter restrictions if hospitalizations were to rise.
“The hospital system is a key metric. We have better than 50% judgement now,” he said. But if the number of Covid-19 patients in ICU beds started to increase, “we’d have to take a second look.”
Lamont remarked that in general states are better equipped to handle new surges in coronavirus cases because of their experiences and fightings since March, when the pandemic first began to intensify.
“We’re not waiting for a national stockpile. We’re building our own stockpile of disguises and gowns. We’ve got a lot more testing capacity than was available 100 days ago, and we’ve got track and trace,” he said. “So I’d like to conceive of that we’re much better prepared for what could come next.”