Pedro Soto Tackles Covid-19 On 3 Fronts

Pedro Soto made it through a rough bout of Covid-19 — and now is helping guide Connecticut’s economy to do the same.

Soto, who lives in Westville, has experienced the pandemic at three levels.

He has experienced it personally: On Sunday, April 5, he developed a slight cough. ​“I said, ​‘Well this is one of the symptoms … but maybe I’ll be OK,’” he said. But that Monday he had a fever. By week’s end he was slammed, aching all over, sore in his right lung, kept awake with throbbing legs — and diagnosed with the coronavirus.

“I have never felt like this,” even with pneumonia, Soto said Monday during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

“When you get this, it’s no joke.”

Three weeks later, Soto, who’s 43, had recovered and returned to work. Where he experienced the pandemic as a boss: He owns and runs Hygrade Precision Technologies, which grinds and laps and machines small metal and plastic parts to a tenth of 1,000th of an inch. The same week Soto fell sick, so did three others who work in the same office. He handled emails from bed.

“It was a very scary time at the company. I was knocked out. Three days in, someone else. Then someone else …”

But none of the rest of his 27-member workforce fell ill. Everyone on the shop floor, where the company began practicing social distancing early on, avoided contracting the coronavirus. Hygrade’s operations are deemed ​“essential.” So it could stay open — and did. Aviation orders tanked, but medical orders didn’t. In one case, the company worked on precision parts for respirators. Business overall has fluctuated, but remained steady enough. And now a federal Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program check appears to have come through, Soto reported.

“I count myself fortunate that we never had to close,” he said. Still, he has revised five-year growth projections to spread the trajectory over a decade.

Meanwhile, Soto, who also serves as president of Aerospace Component Manufacturers, a Connecticut and southwestern Massachusetts association, experienced the pandemic from a statewide policy perspective. Gov. Ned Lamont tapped him to serve on his Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group to advise the state on the easing of pandemic restrictions.

The ​“open” in the group’s title doesn’t extend to its deliberations, which are held in private and not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Soto said in general the group is allowing ​“the epidemiologists and the scientists to lead the charge.” The group is working to have the reopening take place in a way that won’t require regular back-and-forth decision-making in which lockdowns are eased and then reinstituted.

“We really want this to be a one-way street,” he said.

“This is going to take longer than I would have thought” eventually, he said. ​“Getting back to February is a long way off.”

Click on the video to watch the full interview with Pedro Soto on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”