Camillo: Town to Lift Mask Mandate for Businesses and Private Clubs

At Wednesday’s weekly Covid press conference, First Selectman Fred Camillo said the since the town’s vaccination rate is high, the plan is to lift the mask mandate for businesses and private clubs some time this week or early next week.

At that time, businesses will be able to set their own mask policies.

Camillo had announced the universal masking mandate in the third week of August, when also announced all Town employees would be required to be fully vaccinated no later than September 27 or be subject to weekly testing.

However, Camillo said some town departments were between 90% and 100% vaccinated and the weekly testing requirement was scrapped.

“Right now we don’t see a need for testing,” he said. “We’re telling people wear a mask if you’re not vaccinated and we should be fine.”

As of Wednesday:

• Since the beginning of the pandemic Greenwich has had 5,721 cases, which includes 69 new cases in the past week.

• The rate per 100,000 was 12.8, which was the same as the previous week.

• 85.64% of the 52,482 eligible Greenwich residents have had at least one shot.

• 79% of eligible residents were fully vaccinated

“This is going to be with us,” Camillo continued. “We don’t know how many variants are coming, but we want people to live normal lives.”

Camillo went on to urge people to social distance, wash hands and keep a mask handy if they visit a location place that requires one.

“Hats off to Greenwich for adhering to protocols,” he said, noting the mask requirement was had been reinstituted when the town was in the red zone, with cases climbing. Since then he said the number of cases had flattened.

Greenwich Hospital’s Dana Marnane said there was just one Covid positive patient in the hospital as of Wednesday. Unfortunately, that person was in the ICU and on a ventilator.

Across the Yale New Haven Health System, as of Wednesday there were 73 Covid positive patients. Of those, 24 had been vaccinated.

System wide the number of hospitalized cases was down 45% compared to two weeks earlier.