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April 14, 2020

Lamont launches biz, health advisory group focused on reopening CT economy

Photo | Flickr via World Economic Forum Indra Nooyi at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2010.
By Joe Cooper

Connecticut's business recruitment arm is forming an advisory group of business and health experts who will consult with and advise Gov. Ned Lamont's administration on how to gradually reopen the state's economy when the COVID-19 outbreak subsides.

Gov. Ned Lamont late Monday announced AdvanceCT, the nonprofit formerly known as the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, will establish the so-called Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group aimed at examining how best to reopen commerce in a safe and healthy manner. 

Dr. Albert Ko, a Yale epidemiologist, and Indra Nooyi, the former PepsiCo chief executive and current co-chair of AdvanceCT who advises the Lamont administration on economic issues, will co-chair the advisory group.

Other senior advisors will include Ezekiel Emanuel, who serves as vice provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), according to the governor's office.

AdvanceCT will announce other members in the coming days.

“To make the reopening of Connecticut’s economy work in the best way possible, we must strike a proper balance between public health and the economy," Lamont said in a statement. "To make this work, we need to make sure that Connecticut has a thoughtful approach to getting our state moving after this unprecedented, global public health emergency.”

The advisory group was announced on the same day Democratic governors of a half dozen northeastern states outlined a regional approach to devising a plan for the careful easing of COVID-19 restrictions, warning  that changes will come slowly and be guided by public-health experts, not politicians or business interests.

On a conference call hosted by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Lamont and the governors of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island reinforced the notion that the decision to reopen their states is one for governors, not the federal government or President Donald J. Trump. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, later joined the regional planning effort.

“This is about being smart,” Cuomo said. “Not political, but smart.”

Meantime, with varying degrees of frustration and restraint, legislative leaders and others are complaining that Lamont’s shut down of many parts of the state economy was a premature jolt to fragile businesses and anxious residents, even while they acknowledge continued restrictions may prove necessary by month’s end. 

Also Monday, the Connecticut Department of Public Health reported 106 new hospitalizations for COVID-19, bringing to 1,760 the current patient census attributed to the coronavirus. Statewide, about one-third of the state’s 8,000 hospital beds were available, as well as another 1,800 beds at temporary facilities opened around Connecticut.

Deaths associated with COVID-19 increased by 48 to 601. The number of new infections confirmed by laboratory tests increased by 1,346 to 13,381. 

A CT Mirror report contributed to this story

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