October 26, 2020

DPH Alert System, Drug Take Back Day, Grant for Small Businesses, and additional information

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DPH Launches Weekly Municipal Level COVID-19 Alert System

The Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) launched a new weekly, color-coded COVID-19 alert system for every city and town in the state, showing the average daily case rate /100,000 population for the last two weeks.

The municipal level alert map will be updated every week. It can be found here.

Red level alert is for municipalities that have a two-week average daily COVID-19 case rate higher than 15/100,000 population.

Orange level alert is for municipalities with case rates between 10-14/ 100,000 population. This includes Old Saybrook.

Yellow alert level is for case rates between 5-9/100,000 population. This includes Old Lyme and Westbrook.

Municipalities with case rates lower than five per 100,000 population will be colored in gray.

Below is a chart that details what CT DPH instructs individual residents, community leaders and institutions to do in response to their respective community alert level.

National Drug Take Back Day – Saturday, October 24

Lymes’ Youth Service Bureau (LYSB) and the Lyme-Old Lyme (LOL) Prevention Coalition are hosting a Drug Take Back event tomorrow.

Anyone with unused or expired over-the-counter medications, prescription medications, medication samples, medications for household pets, and medicated lotions or ointments can drop off them off from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. at the Old Lyme Firehouse, 69 Lyme St. for disposal.

Items not collected include: needles or other “sharps,” hazardous waste, thermometers, or other personal care products.

Prior to disposing any items, please remove all personal or identifying information from the medicine.

To read more about the Old Lyme collection, click here.

DECD Offers Grant to Help Non-Profit and Small Businesses

The Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) has recently created a $50 million grant program to help small businesses and non-profit organizations in Connecticut recover from COVID-19 related issues.

The program will provide businesses and nonprofits in Connecticut that have fewer than 20 employees or a 2019 payroll of less than $1.5 million with a one-time grant of $5,000. The application is expected to go live the week of November 9th.

$50 million program, using Federal CARES Act dollars
A one-time grant of $5,000 to eligible small businesses and non-profits
Business must have twenty or fewer employees or have a total 2019 payroll of less than $1.5 million (annualized). FTE and payroll include affiliated companies
$25 million will be reserved for businesses in distressed municipalities
$25 million will be reserved for businesses in non-distressed municipalities
Potentially 10,000 small businesses could be receiving grants by Dec 30, 2020 via this program

To read more, click here.

New Grant Program To Support Connecticut’s Arts Community Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

Gov. Lamont has announced the State of Connecticut will be providing up to $9 million in grants to certain nonprofit arts organizations in the state to help them recover more quickly from the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Utilizing federal CARES Act funding from the state’s Coronavirus Relief Fund, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development’s (DECD) Office of the Arts will administer the COVID Relief Fund for the Arts program with the goal of supporting:

Arts nonprofits for whom grants will make a difference in terms of survival or rehiring; and

Arts nonprofits that have had to curtail operations for a period of time due to the pandemic and which have had limited ability to reopen due to pandemic restrictions and/or have had to pivot their service delivery due to pandemic restrictions.

For more information, click here.