ALBANY COUNTY — While Albany County, like the rest of the state, is starting to see a plateau after the holiday surge of COVID-19 infections — 172 new cases were reported Monday morning — the county’s hospitalizations have broken another record.

Twenty-two county residents were hospitalized with the virus overnight and there are currently 180 residents hospitalized with COVID-19.

“Our positive numbers are going down … but one of the alarming things ... is our hospitalizations,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy at his Monday morning press briefing.

He also announced that three more county residents have died from COVID-19: a man in his sixties, a man in his eighties, and a woman in her nineties.

This brings the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 275.

Vaccine shortage

McCoy went over the shifting state directives on COVID-19 vaccinations. “They switched gears on Friday night,” he said.

Pharmacies are to vaccinate residents who are 65 or older while hospitals will vaccinate health-care workers.

McCoy held up a sheaf of paper with lists of categories of people the county will vaccinate — mostly essential workers, ranging from police and teachers to grocery-store clerks and bus drivers.

The county received 800 doses over the weekend, McCoy said, and appointments that were already made with residents who got their first shots with the county will still get their second shots with the county.

“We need to address the homebound people,” said McCoy, noting they are not on the list.

Albany County is working with the city of Albany and with Mohawk Ambulance, a private company, that will focus on going to the homes of people 65 and older to vaccinate them. This project depends upon the availability of vaccine doses.

“We have the demand. We just do not have the supply right now,” said McCoy.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, at his Monday press briefing, continued to stress that, under the new federal guidelines, over 7 million New Yorkers are eligible for vaccinations yet the state this week is receiving just 250,000 doses from the federal government, a decrease of 50,000 from the week before.

Cuomo on Monday sent a letter to the chief executive officer of Pfizer, Albert Bourla,  asking for New York State to purchase vaccine doses directly from the company. Pfizer developed its vaccine with a German company, BioNTech.

In the letter, the governor points out that Pfizer is a New York company and that it did not participate in the federal Operation Warp Speed program. The other vaccine given emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Moderna, was part of Warp Speed.

“Because you are not bound by commitments that Moderna made as part of Operation Warp Speed, I am requesting that the State of New York be permitted to directly purchase doses from you,” Cuomo wrote.

He also wrote a letter on Monday to Alex Azar, the outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services, blasting Azar for causing “damage, anxiety and confusion among the American public” by intimating vaccine doses that had been held in reserve — presumably for the required second shot — would be dispersed to states.

“You told reporters on January 12, 2021 that the federal government would increase the supply of vaccines by shipping ‘all of the doses that had been held in physical reserve’ when in reality, according to news reports, the federal government had already distributed all of those doses and supply would not be increasing,” Cuomo wrote.

Cuomo cited comments of outrage from six other Democratic governors and asked, “When were these additional doses released? Were you aware at the time you made these public comments that there were not additional doses in reserve? When will vaccine supply increase? Will the second doses we have been promised actually arrive? Why was New York's Week Six allocations cut at a time when we were promised an increased supply?”

Also on Monday, several new state vaccination sites opened — in Stony Brook, South Ozone Park, Potsdam, and Plattsburgh — and eight community vaccination kits were deployed to churches and cultural centers in New York City, on Long Island, and in Westchester.

The state has launched a new webpage, COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker, that tracks vaccine administration across New York.

“For the lower performing facilities, we are going to give them less, if any, of the new allocation,” Cuomo said at his briefing. “They will all have enough to do their staff but we want to make sure that the faster facilities, the higher performing facilities, get more of the new allocation because we want it out the door. We don’t want it sitting on the shelf. So, those that can vaccinate faster will get more of the new allocation.”

He also said, “Unvaccinated doctors and nurses are still a problem.” They can become superspreaders, Cuomo said, and are also needed to tend to ill COVID-19 patients.

Currently, Cuomo reported, only 60 percent of doctors and nurses statewide have been vaccinated.

“Hospital capacity is still the danger zone, red line, shutdown area, whatever you want to call it,” Cuomo said.

Unlike in Albany County, hospitalizations are declining statewide. But, Cuomo said, new strains of the virus — from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil — could turn those numbers around.

“Yes, the numbers are coming down today,” Cuomo said of hospitalizations. “If you see a new wave via a second strain you’ll see the numbers go back up.”

Newest numbers

As of Monday morning, Albany county has had 15,897 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 172 new cases reported on Monday.

Of those, 123 did not have a clear source of infection identified, 38 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, and 11 are health-care workers or residents of congregate settings.

The five-day average for new daily positives has decreased to 242.8 from 251.8. There are now 1,902 active cases in the county, down from 2,051 yesterday.

The number of county residents under mandatory quarantine decreased to 2,990 from 3,138. So far, 47,420 residents have completed quarantine. Of those, 13,995 had tested positive and recovered. That is an increase of 312 recoveries since yesterday.

Of the state’s 10 regions, the Capital Region is tied with the Mohawk Valley for the worst rate of hospital-bed availability, at 25 percent. Currently, 534 Capital Region residents are hospitalized with COVID-19, which represents 0.05 percent of the region’s population.

Statewide,  0.05 percent of New Yorkers are hospitalized with the virus, leaving 32 percent of the state’s hospital beds available.

The Capital Region continues to have the worst rate of intensive-care-unit beds available, at 19 percent. Currently, 213 of the region’s 260 ICU beds are filled.

Statewide, 27 percent of New York’s ICU beds are filled.

The Capital Region has an infection rate, as a seven-day average, of 7.45 percent. Two other areas have a higher rate: Long Island, at 7.84 percent, and the Mohawk Valley, at 7.78 percent.

Statewide, the positivity rate is 6.42 percent.

Albany County, according to the state’s dashboard, has a seven-day rolling average of 8.5 percent, as of Jan. 17, the last date posted.