ALBANY COUNTY — In its 47th week of coping with COVID-19, Albany County looks to be coming down from its post-holiday surge.

On Monday, for the first time in over two months, the Albany County executive, Daniel McCoy, announced a number of new cases that was under 100. That trend continued on Tuesday and Wednesday.

But the hospitalizations and deaths following the surge were still apparent this past week as McCoy announced a total of 20 new deaths of county residents, bringing the county’s toll to 322.

On Wednesday, McCoy noted that fewer county residents are getting tested for the virus. “It messes with our percent-positive rate,” he said, urging people to get tested. 

He noted that between Jan. 30 and Jan. 31, the number of daily tests administered decreased by 63 percent.

Peter Barber, Guilderland’s town supervisor who sends out a daily email alerts to town residents, reporting the latest county and state releases related to COVID-19, noted in his Wednesday email that Guilderland’s emergency medical service has seen “a marked decline in its record number of ambulance transports of COVID-19 patients in early January but those reduced numbers are still much higher than numbers seen last summer and fall.”

Barber wrote on Wednesday, “As of this morning, Town ambulances have transported 247 COVID-19 patients during the pandemic.”

Barber said the town data along with tracking data from The New York Times, which shows Albany County, like most others in the nation, is at an “extremely high risk” level, provide “the best evidence that the virus remains present in our community.” This means Guilderland will stay in a state of emergency, which will likely be extended beyond the Feb. 13 expiration date, he said.

At Wednesday’s county press briefing, Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen, said, “We have noticed a continued downward trend in the number of cases that we are seeing. We are definitely off of the holiday surge and I’ll go so far today as to say it’s encouraging.”

However, she cautioned residents to remain vigilant; to follow protocols of mask-wearing, social-distancing, and not gathering; and to continue to isolate if infected and to quarantine if exposed to COVID-19.

These measures, she said are “essential to continue our downward trend.”

Whalen also warned, “We do have the potential of the highly contagious variant within New York State. This is something that can really change the game.”

According to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention webpage that tracks COVID-19 variants in the United States, as of Wednesday evening, New York has 42 confirmed cases of the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom.

Nationwide, there are 541 confirmed cases of B.1.1.7. New York has the third most of any state; Florida has 186 cases and California has 127 cases.

“The UK strain, the Brazil strain, the South Africa strain — and medical experts are saying these strains could take over. They could be dominant. They could increase the infection rate,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo in a press briefing on Friday. “If any area’s hospital capacity hits 85 percent, then we go back to restrictions, right, because hospital capacity is the red line. That’s when you’re in the danger zone.”

COVID-19 cases have spiked in Albany County after holidays, including Memorial Day and Labor Day as well as more recently Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

“Please avoid the large gatherings,” urged Whalen on Wednesday. “Avoid the Super Bowl parties. Try to do  virtual celebrations.”

 

Cuomo plans reopening

At his press conference on Friday, Cuomo continued to highlight that the infection rate in New York State is declining from its post-holiday high and said the economy needs to reopen.

“New York City restaurants, on our current trajectory, we can open indoor dining at 25 percent on Valentine’s Day,” Cuomo said.

He also said, “Going forward, we are very excited about the possibility of reopening venues with testing. We demonstrated it in Buffalo at the Buffalo Bills playoff game.”

Seven-thousand fans, each of whom tested negative, were allowed into a 70,000-capacity stadium, resulting in “virtually no cases of spread from that game,” Cuomo said.

“We’re going to extend it in New York State safe marriage receptions. A promise of marital bliss is returning,” he said.

Events must be approved by local health department. There will be a 50-percent capacity limit and no more than 150 people can attend. Everyone must be tested before the event.

“We are developing more rapid testing capacity all across the state,” said Cuomo. “We’re also developing an app which a person, once they receive the test, can have on the app. We’re excited about this.”

He concluded, “You propose on Valentine’s Day and then you can have the wedding ceremony March 15, up to 150 people. People will actually come to your wedding because you can tell them with the testing it will be safe. Everybody there will have been tested, everyone will be safe.”

 

Blowback from athletes

This week the county felt blowback from some local athletes and coaches on a decision not to allow high-risk sports until the infection rate decreases to 4 percent.

McCoy said he supported the decision by the county’s health department. The state left it up to local health departments to decide if high-risk sports would be allowed. Locally, only Rensselaer County is allowing them.

“I have to make sure I did everything in my power to save someone’s life, not gain someone’s vote ...,” said McCoy. “I stand by Dr. Whalen … this is about science. This is about the data. It’s not about the politics.”

On Saturday morning, as protesters with signs and chants gathered to make their views known, McCoy, at his press briefing, alluded to the deaths of elderly residents rom the virus and asked, “Where’s the chant to protect our seniors?”

Since the start of the pandemic in Albany County, in March, McCoy said, he and Whalen had followed guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the World Health Organization.

“We haven’t wavered, Dr. Whalen and I, on one thing,” said McCoy. I don’t know why things are changing,” he said, alluding to Cuomo’s allowing high-risk sports and weddings. “And we’re just saying, ‘Hey, open up. Do weddings. Do this, do that,’ when our numbers are at our peak We’ve lost more Albany County residents these last two months then we did in 11 months and more people are hospitalized.”

Speaking to parents, McCoy said, “I want your kids to feel normal but we can’t just kick out the science.”

McCoy urged coaches to read the guidance, which is now posted to the county’s website. McCoy suggested basketball, a high-risk sport, could be played from March to June, if the infection rate is down then. “Modify your season … Be creative,” he said.

McCoy noted that 11 counties had signed onto the guidance. Both he and Whalen said many coaches and superintendents had praised them for the decision to hold off on high-risk sports until the infection rate is lower. McCoy called the protesting coaches “5 percent of bad apples.”

“This is a common-sense approach,” said Whalen, noting it was discussed and agreed upon by county health commissioners in the region.

She pointed to a day-by-day graph of infections in the county, indicating there are many times more now than during the springtime surge.

“We are seeing many more people being sickened and we are concerned about hospitalizations,” said Whalen.

She also noted another COVID-19 variant in the area — B.1.1.7, the highly transmissible variant first identified in the United Kingdom.

“Quite frankly, it is just not time to open up things again,” said Whalen.

Referring to the protesters, she said, “I’m very concerned for the people that are outside today because it’s freezing … I agree everyone has a right to state their opinion but I think that the parents need to … really look at the information they are sharing with their children and look at what’s happening in the community and look about the message that sometimes we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good.”

Whalen said some parents have thanked her for the decision and shared with her “how difficult it is to communicate their concern to their children who have lost loved ones to COVID and are petrified to send their children into a situation where they may place them at risk. I also understand that there are many that want to get their children back involved in sports.”

Whalen went on, “What my decision must be is to protect the health of Albany County residents and this is why I made the decision I did.”

She noted that student athletes could, under the guidance, still continue to practice and train.

Whalen said that two of her own children are athletes and her third child is passionate about the arts. “That community is also suffering, not being able to perform and share their work with others. It is a difficult time,” she said.

Whalen said her department continues to see hundreds of cases every day in Albany County and she called the deaths every day “sobering.”

Whalen concluded, “We really don’t have a choice at this point … We have to toe the line until we get through the worst of this.”

 

Vaccines

On Tuesday, Cuomo said that soon states will be getting more COVID-19 vaccine doses from the federal government and that local governments, like Albany County, charged with vaccinating essential workers can add and prioritize groups within federal and state guidelines.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ here,” he said.

Cuomo, who chairs the National Governors Association, had a call with White House officials on Tuesday morning and learned that the original 16-percent increase promised by the Biden administration has been bumped up to 20 percent.

“The increase is now going to go from 16 to about 20 percent as a direct allocation,” Cuomo said at his Tuesday press briefing. “That means the state will then turn around and supply 20 percent additional to the local governments, so they can count on an additional 20 percent in the coming weeks.”

Cuomo also said that local governments are in different situations “and we want to give them more flexibility.”

Initially, the state set up two tiers for administering vaccinations, based on federal guidance:

— 1a, which included nursing-home workers and residents, all of whom have now been offered shots, Cuomo said, and hospital workers of which 75 percent have been vaccinated; and

— 1b, which consists of essential workers, ranging from police officers to teachers, as well as senior citizens.

The state’s system now has pharmacies vaccinating people age 65 and older, local governments vaccinating essential workers, and hospitals vaccinating health-care workers.

“If a local health department, county government wants to add to their — what’s called 1b — prioritization, if they want to add developmentally disabled facilities, if they want to add taxi drivers, Uber drivers, restaurant workers, they can do that if they think it works within their prioritization locally,” Cuomo said at his press briefing on Tuesday.

He went on about local governments, “They are getting more, so theoretically they would have additional supply to make those decisions, but that’s going to be up to the local government to add in the 1b category if they think it makes sense.”

On Wednesday, three Democratic members of the state Assembly — Patricia Fahy, John McDonald, and Carrie Woerner — sent a letter to Cuomo urging that food-pantry employees, defined as essential workers in New York State since March 2020 but ineligible to receive the vaccine under current state guidelines, be included in phase 1b, making them eligible for vaccination.

Albany County’s health department is scheduled to administer 1,400 vaccine doses on Thursday, from 1 to 7:30 p.m., at the Times Union Center in Albany, Whalen said; 1,000 will be first doses and 400 will be second doses.

Of the first-dose vaccinations, she said, 200 are allocated for the Office for People With Developmental Disabilities and the other 800 are allocated for 1b essential workers. People have to be signed up ahead in order to receive a vaccination.

“We released our link last night at five o’clock and the clinic was filled in a very short period of time,” said Whalen.

She praised both her staff and the volunteers in the county’s Medical Reserve Corps for their work in running the vaccination clinic. “It is a well-run machine,” Whalen said. Last Thursday, 800 doses were administered.

According to a release Wednesday from the governor’s office, the Capital Region has administered 116,037 of the 137,840 doses of vaccine it has been given, which is 84 percent. Statewide, 77 percent of doses have been administered.

Cuomo said on Tuesday that the state is “going to look at targeting vaccinations by locations with high positivity rates,” starting with a demonstration, holding a mass vaccination clinic in Yankee Stadium solely for Bronx residents.

“Mass vaccination, get the high positivity down, and target people in areas where the positivity is higher, which tend to have a high predominance of Black, poor, hard-to-access communities, Latino communities,” he said.

Cuomo also announced that the federal government is starting a program to give vaccine doses directly to pharmacies. Currently, New York State is getting 300,000 doses weekly from the federal government.

“The federal is going to give an additional 10 percent of that state’s allocation to the private pharmacies,” Cuomo said. “So, private pharmacies going forward will have more.”

This means that New York pharmacies will be getting about 30,000 doses each week.

Cuomo noted that roughly half of New Yorkers get vaccinated against flu and a large percentage use pharmacies for that.

“The White House is also going to reimburse the state government for FEMA reimbursement,” said Cuomo, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Finally, Cuomo stressed that the federal government sends vaccine in two allocations, first and second doses. Both vaccines currently approved for emergency use require two doses, several weeks apart, for full effect.

“There’s been a dialogue by some governors and some health experts saying: start to use the second dose as a first dose,” said Cuomo. “In other words, we have about 300,000 second doses this week, use them for a first dose. The federal government does not now allow them. Why? Because then you have to really know what your future production is.”

 

Airport masks

Beginning Monday, federal Transportation Security Administration workers were empowered to enforce the federal government’s mask requirement at TSA checkpoints and throughout the nation’s airports.

The mask mandate was developed by the CDC on Jan. 29 to protect the transportation system as well as passengers and employees from the COVID-19 virus and to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 throughout the transportation system, according to Acting Secretary David Pekoske.

Albany International Airport first instituted a mask requirement for all passengers, guests, and staff in April 2020, according to a release from the airport.

According to the TSA, people without a mask will be asked to wear or obtain one to proceed through the security screening process. Depending on the circumstance, those who refuse to wear a mask may be subject to a civil penalty for attempting to circumvent screening requirements, interfering with screening personnel, or a combination of those offenses, the agency said.

 

Stopping fraud

The state’s labor department announced on Tuesday that it has identified over 425,000 fraudulent unemployment benefit claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing fraudsters from stealing more than $5.5 billion in benefits.

Since the pandemic began in March 2020, the labor department has paid over $65 billion to more than 4 million New Yorkers — representing more than 30 typical years’ worth of benefits paid in just 11 months. 

Criminals are using real New Yorkers’ identities — likely stolen during previous data breaches involving institutions like banks, insurance companies, and major employers — to file fraudulent claims and illegally collect benefits in the name of individuals who are not unemployed, according to a release from the labor department.

Anyone who receives a monetary determination letter from the Department of Labor, but did not apply for unemployment benefits should immediately report it to the department at on.ny.gov/uifraud.

The department has released a video to educate New Yorkers on avoiding fraud.

 

Newest numbers

McCoy started Wednesday’s press briefing by announcing another county resident, a woman in  eighties, had died of COVID-19 overnight.

As of Wednesday morning, Albany County has had 18,568 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 69 new cases since Tuesday.

Of the new cases, 50 did not have clear sources of infection identified, 13 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, and six are health-care workers or residents of congregate settings.

The five-day average for new daily positives has decreased to 119.4 from 139.8. There are now 1,246 active cases in the county, down from 1,365 yesterday.

The number of county residents under mandatory quarantine decreased to 2,400 from 2,482. So far, 55,942 residents have completed quarantine. Of those, 17,322 had tested positive and recovered. That is an increase of 183 recoveries since yesterday.

There were six new hospitalizations overnight, and there are 130 county residents currently hospitalized from the virus – a net decrease of 16. There are now 16 patients in intensive-care units, one more than on Tuesday.

Of the state’s 10 regions, the Capital Region continues to have the worst rate for available hospital beds and for available ICU beds.

According to a release from the governor’s office on Wednesday, 405 Capital Region residents are hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 0.04 percent of the population and leaves 27 percent of hospital beds available.

Statewide, 0.04 percent of New Yorkers are hospitalized, leaving 34 percent of hospital beds available.

Currently, 204 of the Capital Region’s 242 ICU beds are filled, leaving 18 percent available.

Statewide, 26 percent of ICU beds are available.

As of Tuesday, as a seven-day average, the Capital Region has an infection rate of 4.52 percent. Statewide, the infection rate is 4.86 percent.

Albany County, as of Tuesday, has a seven-day rolling average, has an infection rate of 5.1 percent, according to the state’s dashboard.