Gov. Ned Lamont took the stage before Connecticut’s restaurant industry Monday night in a casino ballroom nearly full for the first time since the arrival of COVID-19.
He shut the hospitality industry down at 8 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day in March 2020, putting most of its 160,000 employees out of work. Now, on a day when the state reported 5,000 new infections and COVID hospitalizations reached 500, Lamont was their guest.