Emphasizing that the COVID-19 virus does not stop at any town or city border, two councils of governments joined together Friday to call on Gov. Ned Lamont to impose a unified, statewide mandate on indoor masking.

The Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, which represents 22 cities, towns and boroughs, and the Capitol Region Council of Governments, which has 38 member municipalities, held a news conference, with the backing of their health districts, to highlight the importance of indoor masking. They advocated for a uniform mask mandate across the state’s 169 municipalities, as coronavirus cases rise, fueled by the delta variant.

The councils together represent about a third of the state’s municipalities.

East Hartford Mayor Marcia Leclerc, chair of the Capitol Region Council of Governments, said the coronavirus transmission rate has accelerated through Connecticut, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that people in areas with substantial or high transmission rates wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.

While Lamont’s Aug. 5 executive order provides municipal leaders with the option of requiring masks in indoor public places, she said an overarching statewide mandate is necessary, as people come in and out of communities for shopping and work.

“We know that COVID and the pandemic and the variant do not stop at the borders of our communities,” she said.

North Stonington First Selectman Michael Urgo, vice chair of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, said SCCOG members came to a consensus that masks should be worn in indoor settings, as health officials are telling people.

“We’re especially concerned for kids,” he said. “They cannot get vaccinated because they’re not eligible, and we know masks prevent the spread (of the coronavirus).”

Urgo said the story has changed since mask mandates were lifted in the spring. “Unfortunately, not enough people took the vaccine and thus herd immunity was not accomplished, so now we have a new strain that we know even those vaccinated can be infected by and spread unknowingly,” he said. “While those vaccinated are very unlikely to have serious symptoms, there are many, as I said, who can’t get the vaccine.”

Urgo said people do not always live, work and shop in the same town, so it does not make sense to have different rules in different towns. He said a statewide mandate would immediately impact the infection rate and protect people.

“We don’t want to see a mutation that can’t be controlled by our current vaccines to pop up, so we’ve got to stop the spread now,” he added.

Ledge Light Health District Director Stephen Mansfield said his agency and Uncas Health District strongly support a statewide masking protocol.

Without a statewide mandate, he said there is a patchwork of inconsistent protocols: some towns have implemented a mandate, while others are sticking with the status quo or issuing a strong recommendation for masks. This inconsistency sends a fragmented message to the public and may lead to disparate health and economic outcomes for municipalities.

“In short, our citizens are receiving different levels of protection from COVID while in public settings,” Mansfield said.

On Wednesday, SCCOG Chairman Fred Allyn III, the mayor of Ledyard, sent a letter that informed the governor that SCCOG issued a recommendation urging voluntary indoor masking across the region. The recommendation came after 20 of the council’s 22 municipal members met during a teleconference, along with representatives from regional health districts, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Tribe, the Naval Submarine Base and Coast Guard Academy.

The letter also called on the governor to “issue a new Executive Order to require indoor mask wearing statewide until such time as the coronavirus infection rate in Connecticut is in decline and counties in the state are no longer in the CDC’s substantial or high transmission categories.”

In the region, the City of Groton, Town of Groton and New London on Wednesday announced indoor mask mandates, effective Monday.

After a discussion among most of the representatives of the Capitol Region Council of Governments’ 38 member municipalities, the council of governments sent a letter to Lamont on Thursday that also called for a statewide mandate for indoor masking.

At a COVID-19 news briefing on Thursday, Lamont said some communities have low vaccination rates, and he thinks a mask mandate is very appropriate there. But he said there are some communities with high vaccination rates and, in those places, he wants to give people an incentive to be vaccinated.

However, he said the state will continue to monitor the numbers and, if coronavirus cases are rising, “it could change.”

In the Capitol Region Council of Governments, municipalities implementing mask mandates include Bloomfield, Farmington, Hartford, Manchester, Mansfield, Simsbury, West Hartford and Windsor Locks, South Windsor and Windsor, the council’s Chief Operating Officer Pauline Yoder said.

Leclerc said that while East Hartford is putting together a mask mandate, it is looking for a statewide mandate so there is no ambiguity for people passing through different towns.

C.J. Thomas, chair of the Farmington Town Council, said Farmington plans to implement a mask mandate but is requesting the statewide mandate. “We have in Farmington more people that travel into our town to work here than actually live here, so not having any of our surrounding towns following suit kind of makes our mandate ineffectual,” he said.

Mansfield Mayor Toni Moran said that the town adopted a mandate for masking in all public places, including government offices and any facilities that handle 25 or more occupants. She said Mansfield, home to the University of Connecticut in the village of Storrs, is concerned about the impact of the 10,000 or more people coming next week from across the state and world, though she noted the university “has taken a very proactive responsibility on this.”

“They have required everybody who is going to be on campus to be vaccinated, but I am really concerned about the spread of the delta variant, and without having mask mandates statewide, we can’t guarantee that the people who come into our community will understand our rules and will abide by them," she said, "so we are very much in favor of a statewide mandate.”

k.drelich@theday.com