Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Justin Elicker at Monday’s presser.
The city’s planned new drop-in, Covid-19 check-in and health care site for the homeless is slated to open in Blake Field on Tuesday, and the number of total confirmed positive coronavirus cases in New Haven has surpassed 1,730.
Mayor Justin Elicker gave those updates Monday afternoon during his daily coronavirus-related press briefing.
The mayor hosted this presser not online via the Zoom teleconferencing app, which is where nearly every such update has taken place since mid-March, but rather in-person in the back parking lot of the police department’s garage at 710 Sherman Pkwy.
A majority of the press conference was dedicated not to Covid-19 matters, but rather to the nine arrests and 12 vehicle seizures that city and West Haven police made on Sunday after 60 riders descended on the Elm City to ride illegally through New Haven’s parks and streets.
Elicker said that the city now has 1,732 confirmed positive Covid-19 cases and 73 related fatalities. That’s a jump of roughly 90 new confirmed infections and 10 new confirmed fatalities since the city last reported on Friday that New Haven had 1,646 confirmed cases and 63 untimely deaths.
Elicker said that the city’s planned pop-up triage center in Blake Field for homeless individuals who continue to sleep outside and have not taken the city up on housing relocation services should open tomorrow.
That site will be staffed by health care and housing support workers from the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, the Connecticut Mental Health Center, and Columbus House, and will offer food, mental and physical health care, “wraparound” services, connections to temporary and permanent housing services, and temperature tests to make sure people do not have Covid-19 symptoms. Visitors will also have access to bathrooms and showers.
It will be open Monday through Friday, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Other updates included:
• Masks for Connecticut, in collaboration with the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, Varick AME Church, and other local partners, will be giving out free masks Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. at ConnCAT’s location at 4 Science Park. Residents can walk up or drive up to the site and receive five masks per walk-up visitor or per car.
• Elicker said he heard numerous complaints over the weekend about large groups of people gathering in Bowen Field and other parks throughout the city to enjoy the spring weather.
“We are far from being out of the woods, and it’s critical that every resident participate in the guidance we are giving,” he said.
That includes wearing masks while out in public, avoiding large groups, maintaining a six-foot physical distance from others while outside, washing one’s hands frequently with soap and water, and staying home if feeling sick with a fever or a dry cough.
Click here to sign up to volunteer at the Blake Field Drop-In Center.
Keep it up, Mr. Mayor. It's gonna be a long struggle.