Paul Bass Photo
Edgewood Park on Thursday.
Elicker at presser: Yale snubbed “neighbor” in time of need.
Mayor Justin Elicker announced the second New Haven death from Covid-19 and thanked University of New Haven for stepping in after Yale refused to make dormitory rooms available to cops and firefighters for isolation.
The mayor also urged parents to keep children off playgrounds.
Those were among the updates Elicker and his officials offered Friday afternoon during their daily Zoom press briefing.
The second New Havener to die from the coronavirus was in their late 40s. The person was not connected to the man in his 50s who died earlier this week and was not involved in the health care field, according to city Health Director Maritza Bond.
The number of New Haveners testing positive for Covid-19 jumped from 30 to 52 over the past day, Elicker said.
“It’s very clear the spike is beginning in New Haven,” he said. “We need to do everything possible to slow this down.”
He urged people to wash hands regularly and abide by the governor’s new limit on gatherings to five people.
Parks and playgrounds across town have been busy at times this week.
“Do not interact with other people. Don’t go play basketball and football in park,” Elicker urged. “Don’t have your kids go the playground. They’re touching metal slides and swings and they can transfer it to other people.”
The governor’s order does not include religious services, however. Elicker has been urging congregations to take services online.
Yale Said No, UNH Yes
Elicker took aim at Yale during the briefing for turning down his request to make dormitory rooms available for city cops and firefighters who need to self-isolate. He said he was looking for rooms for two categories of cops and firefighters: “healthy, asymptomatic officers who may have family members exposed who do not want to return home so they can continue working”; and those “who may have been exposed but not yet symptomatic, or have symptoms but not yet tested.”
Yale said no. It did announce Thursday that it is contributing $1 million to a fund to help the city during the crisis.
Elicker said he never asked for that contribution.
He compared Yale’s response to a “neighbor” who turns down a request to shelter your kids when your “house is burning down.”
If “your neighbor said, ‘No, but here’s a check so you can stay at the Econolodge across town’ — what does that say about your neighbor?”
By contrast, when Elicker approached UNH President Steven Kaplan with the same request, “in the first five minutes of the conversation [he] said,’ Yes, we will make this happen.’ UNH has rolled out the red carpet for us. They have quickly worked to get students’ belongings out of the dorms.” Elicker said the city and UNH are “quite close” to “finalizing an agreement.” It should cover between 100 and 150 rooms, Elicker said.
Elicker’s remarks about Yale signaled that the town-gown tensions evident during the recent city budget announcement have not been eased by a sense of shared mission during this Covid-19 crisis.
“Our student rooms still contain their belongings, but we have teams planning the feasibility of packing and storing all the student belongings so that the rooms could be utilized,” university spokesperson Karen Peart told the Independent by email Friday night. “We are pursuing schemes that involve professional movers and packers, and using temporary storage. The process will take weeks, as all of the residence hall rooms on campus are filled with student belongings. As soon as we have been able to clear any space, we have informed the mayor that we will let him know.”
Peart continued, “The $5 million fund is not connected in any way to the fact that we are not able to provide use of the residential colleges at this time.”
See below for Yale’s full response.
Elicker said the city is having “very productive conversations with other universities” to help the city out in the crisis. Among the needs: More places for homeless people to stay. Right now 84 homeless individuals are staying in hotel rooms to free up space in shelters to allow for social distancing, Elicker reported. And the city continues to work on a plan for a shelter at Career Regional High School to house homeless people who have Covid-19 but do not require hospitalization.
Other Updates
Also at the briefing:
• School officials said the reason they decided to delay the announcement of the results of the annual magnet school lottery was to make time to enable parents to respond online rather than in person to sign up their children.
• The school system has provided around 42,000 free meals to families since shutting down the Friday before last. It has distributed close to 6,000 electronic devices for online learning, according to Superintendent Iline Tracey (pictured at the briefing).
• The elderly resident of Bella Vista who contracted Covid-19 remains at the hospital, according to Health Director Bond. Elicker reported that Bella Vista management is “struggling a bit” to enforce a no-visitors rule aimed at containing the spread of the virus.
• So far 235 nurses, doctors, emergency medical techs and others with medical backgrounds have signed up for the new Medical Reserve Corps to help with the crisis. “That is an indication to me of the truly amazing generosity and selflessness of this community,” the mayor said. He urged more people to sign up here.
Yale’s Response
Below is the full response from university spokesperson Karen Peart regarding what the university is doing to combat Covid-19 locally.
Based on guidance from Yale experts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, the university has taken bold actions to prevent and slow the spread of COVID-19 for our campus and the broader communities of which we are a part. In addition, members of the university and Yale New Haven Health System are meeting with local officials regularly to share information and update one another on our response plans. Yale’s wide-ranging efforts include working on several fronts to support New Haven community members and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the message to the Yale community on March 26 about raising $5 million toward the newly established Yale Community for New Haven Fund, which we have set up in consultation with both the United Way of Greater New Haven and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. The university put $1 million into the fund, and we will fully match every dollar given by faculty, students, and staff up to our $5 million goal. The fund will be managed by Yale’s Office of New Haven Affairs and overseen by an advisory committee. We will begin distributions as soon as possible.
University Properties has suspended March and April base rent payments for over 100 city businesses located in university-owned buildings. In addition, Lauren Zucker, associate vice president for New Haven Affairs and University Properties, and her office are actively working with local merchants and Yale tenants to help our community get through these challenging times. She is connecting struggling merchants with the Small Business Association, which facilitates assistance loans and grants for entrepreneurs. Her office keeps Yale tenants informed of government financial relief programs and of city and state conference calls about the pandemic. We also are promoting a gift-card-buying initiative to support the downtown shops and restaurants and their employees.
Yale Hospitality remains dedicated to honoring its longstanding tradition of donating food to soup kitchens such as the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen (DESK) and Haven’s Harvest. It continues to donate food to DESK and Harvest during the pandemic, and it has committed to providing organizations serving those experiencing homelessness in New Haven with to-go box meals, prepared dishes, and whole food items. To help support the local economy, Yale Hospitality also has increased food purchases from local vendors.
Yale is maintaining the salaries of the 6,000 New Haven residents who work at the university and is donating personal protective equipment to local hospitals via a massive effort coordinated by Yale Environmental Health and Safety. The university also is supporting vital research on COVID-19 and sharing knowledge about the pandemic with the Yale and New Haven communities. Seven experts from Yale and the City of New Haven held a virtual town hall on March 18 to inform the public and policymakers on the latest developments in the COVID-19 pandemic. Yale held its first town hall to address the outbreak on February 6.
At the Yale School of Public Health, faculty and student volunteers are performing contact tracing to help track and mitigate virus spread in New Haven and the Yale community. The school’s research teams are developing models of the pandemic that will help direct resources to the most urgent needs. Public health faculty members are serving as consultants for New Haven community leaders to help address issues such as seniors in crowded housing, food insecurity, and homelessness. The school is also working with the United Way of Greater New Haven on a community volunteer initiative that provides online tutoring for K‑12 students and food distribution for community members.
Yale School of Nursing (YSN) is leading vital work to address the pandemic. More than 300 YSN faculty, students, and staff have volunteered to provide support during a possible surge of cases. As necessary and appropriate, they would help with triaging, drive-by testing, bedside care, and support tasks. YSN is developing a text-message-based survey to track local healthcare workers who have been exposed to or diagnosed with COVID-19 — this tool will help New Haven health systems plan for workforce needs if cases in the city continue to climb. Nursing students and faculty, along with medical and physician assistants students, continue to work at HAVEN Free Clinic, providing tele-health care and primary care. YSN is working with state and national partners, including licensing boards, to ensure that educational guidelines will allow all nursing students to continue in their educational progression, so they can stay on track to join the health workforce.
Yale School of Medicine researchers are deeply focused on COVID-19, including studying how the novel coronavirus infects cells, how the immune system responds, and ways of disrupting that process. The School of Medicine’s Clinical Virology Laboratory developed testing for COVID-19 in-house, enabling rapid testing for health care workers. Yale researchers are also exploring how patients’ genetics affect outcomes, initiating clinical studies for new therapies, and developing new ways of quickly producing essential medical equipment. To coordinate these and related efforts, the university has established a COVID-19 Response Coordination team (CoReCT).
Yale has established a field hospital in Payne Whitney Gymnasium’s Lanman Center as an extension of the Yale Health Center to treat members of the university community who might become ill with COVID-19. This would reduce the number of people who might otherwise go to local hospitals or clinics. This benefits New Haven as a whole by easing the strain on these health facilities. In addition, Yale is exploring ways to make the center available to people beyond the university community. The Lanman Center will fall under Yale Health’s license to deliver acute care, so it is limited by the state to serving members of the Yale community.
As we continue to practice social distancing, Yale is providing New Haven residents and people from around the world over 40 free online university courses, such as Professor Laurie Santos’ popular “Science of Well-Being” Coursera class. In addition, the university is hosting webinars and other resources to help people cope with stress and feelings of loneliness.
New Haven is Yale’s home, and the efforts I mention here are only some of the ways we are working with the city to get through this crisis together. We recognize that the pandemic is evolving rapidly, and we will continue to consult with public health and medical experts and local and federal officials as we adapt our response plans and strategies. Our priorities will remain centered on the well-being of our campus and home communities.
Thanks to the NHI for covering this. Please let us know if there is an online location where the public can view the press conference live, or later via recording.