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August 27, 2020

Lamont: CDC ‘dead wrong’ about new COVID testing guidelines

Photo | CT-N Gov. Ned Lamont at Wednesday's coronavirus response news briefing.
By Ana Radelat, CT Mirror

Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday said he will ignore new guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that raise the bar on who should get tested for COVID-19.

The new recommendations say some people without symptoms probably don’t need to get tested – even if they’ve been in close contact with an infected person.

At a press conference with his acting public health commissioner, Deidre Gifford, Lamont said Connecticut would continue to encourage people to be tested if they are exposed to COVID-19, despite the updated CDC guidelines to the contrary.

“I think that’s dead wrong,” Lamont said. “If you’ve been  exposed, you can be a carrier, you can be infectious well before you show symptoms. So, we want you to get tested.”

Lamont said the state is “making it easy” to test for COVID-19, with 160 testing sites. As of Wednesday, the Lamont administration reported that 1,095,949 coronavirus tests had been administered in the state.

The CDC’s new guidelines, posted on the agency’s website this week without a public announcement, eliminated previous advice that everyone exposed to the virus through close contact with an infected individual get tested to find out whether they are positive, regardless of whether they have symptoms.

The CDC has estimated that as many as 40% of those infected with the coronavirus have no symptoms, but they can still spread the disease to other people.

In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Brett Giroir, an assistant Health and Human Services secretary in charge of coronavirus testing, said the changes are not intended to reduce testing. They are instead an effort to avoid testing those who get negative results a few days after exposure and have false confidence that they are not infected.


“A negative test on day two (after being exposed) doesn’t mean you are negative, so what is the value of this?,” Giroir asked. “It doesn’t mean, on day four, you can go visit grandma or day six you can go out without a mask.”

Nevertheless, the new CDC guidelines have caused an uproar among some Democrats, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District.

“These changes to testing, made quietly by CDC, are unbelievable and fly in the face of science,” she said in a statement. “The modifications are clearly political. The countries that have been able to control the spread of COVID-19 do not just test those with symptoms.”

Giroir said the change is CDC guidance, but was authorized by the White House’s coronavirus task force, which approved it last week after about a month of debate.

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