Mapping COVID Data
Yale University is collecting and creating maps to visualize the state, spread, and impact of the coronavirus pandemic. These maps provide the context that is unavailable when looking at raw data. While some maps are replicated from other sites as a source a high quality information, most of the maps on this site are unique, providing alternative ways to highlight possible areas of interest that may otherwise go unnoticed.
Nearly all Connecticut schools closed after the onset of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. But starting this past fall, state policy makers and school officials have been increasingly focused on getting as many students physically back into the classroom as possible, citing benefits to student education, mental health, and socialization.
Keeping students in schools safely depends upon the levels of transmission found within individual schools and in the broader community. In Connecticut, individual school districts have made autonomous decisions about their learning models, often changing weekly to an in-person, hybrid or remote model in response to local conditions. State officials have characterized in-school outbreaks as rare, despite the numbers and patterns of reported cases.
The independence of Connecticut public school districts has also produced inequitable access to the facilities and services needed to safely return to school during a pandemic.
Outbreaks of any disease, including COVID-19, within correctional systems have substantial public health repercussions, affecting not only those incarcerated but also those who work in facilities and, by extension, both the communities in which jails and prisons sit and the communities to which released individuals return.