On Wednesday, as protesters clogged the road in front of the state capitol, Albany County’s death toll from COVID-19 rose to 29.

Many of the protesters’ signs — like “Cuomo is the Virus” — were directed at New York’s governor as a group dubbed “Operation Gridlock,” promoted through social media, drew participants from around the state. Similar protests have been held across the country by conservatives and right-wing groups wanting to end the measures taken to control the spread of coronavirus.

The protestors demanded an end to the “pause,” declared by Andrew Cuomo, which shut down schools and nonessential businesses until May 15 to flatten the curve of coronavirus infections so as not to overwhelm the health-care system.

“We, the people, want our freedom back,” said one sign; “Stop Tyranny” said several red signs shaped as octagons; “Live Free or Die,” declared another placard. “Quarantine the Sick, Not the Healthy!” said a handwritten sign held by a youngster at the protest.

An hour before, Albany County’s health commissioner, Elizabeth Whalen, had explained once again that the coronavirus is often spread by people who are asymptomatic; they can feel fine as they pass along the disease without knowing they have it. COVID-19 is most lethal for the elderly and those with underlying health issues.

“Twenty percent will have no signs or symptoms,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy at his Wednesday morning press briefing, just before the protest. He noted that those 20 percent can infect other people and kill them.

Also Wednesday morning, McCoy announced four deaths from Tuesday — two men in their eighties, a woman in her eighties, and a woman in her nineties.

Like most of the COVID-19 deaths in the county, the victims were elderly; most have had underlying health issues. The county’s death toll now stands at 29.

“Sorry you couldn’t be with your loved ones in their final hours,” said McCoy.

The past week saw the death of two residents of the county’s nursing home; the launch of wireless internet service in the Hilltowns to help homebound students; reports on government revenues; the start of a Data Dashboard on the county website tracking age, race, gender, and location of COVID-19 cases; and more testing — both to diagnose the disease and also to survey how many have had it.

Each of these initiatives was covered in daily online dispatches by The Enterprise with many of those stories also in this print edition.

Cuomo on Wednesday reported, “We’re in a relatively good place. In downstate New York, the curve is on the descent. The question is now how long is that descent. Is it a sudden drop off?”

Earlier in the week, Whalen had said that, just because downstate New York was seeing a decline didn’t mean that Albany County was. She urged residents to continue to stay home; wash their hands; and, when they have to go out, stay at least six feet from others. 

“We need to continue our increased vigilance and our increased testing,” said Whalen on Wednesday, adding that the new antibody testing will “inform us how we move forward as a county and as a state.”

Testing to scale

While Albany County was opening new test sites — four walk-in sites for high-risk neighborhoods as well as a drive-through site in Colonie — the governor, too, was concentrating on testing this past week.

Cuomo focused on the need for federal coordination of a supply chain to bring testing to scale so states can begin reopening functions. Tests are currently produced by private laboratory-equipment manufacturers — there are 30 large manufacturers in the United States, he said, and these manufacturers sell the tests to smaller labs, who then sell the tests to hospitals and the public.

For a test to be performed, local labs must have the necessary reagents and there are different reagents for different manufacturer’s tests. The state asked the top 50 labs in New York what they needed to double their testing output, and all said they needed more reagents, Cuomo reported on April 18.

“That’s the logjam that we are in,” said Cuomo: Local labs have the test but they need the reagents to do a higher volume of tests.

He went on, “When you go back to the manufacturer and say: Why don’t you distribute more reagents? They say one of two things. I can’t get more reagents because they come from China, they come from here, they come from here. We don’t make them in the United States. Or they say the federal government is telling me who to distribute to.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Cuomo met with President Donald Trump and reported afterward that the federal and state government would be working together on testing. Cuomo said at his Wednesday press briefing that the meeting with Trump had been productive.

“To me, a productive visit means we spoke truth, we spoke facts, we made decisions, and we have a plan going forward,” Cuomo said.

At his press briefing on Wednesday, Cuomo also announced with Mike Bloomberg, former mayor of New York who made a late and brief foray in presidential politics, looking to be the Democratic candidate, that Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies will help with a new testing program.

Starting right away, the program, coordinating downstate New York with New Jersey and Connecticut, will trace COVID-19 contacts to control the rate of infection.

“Tracing is a very big, big deal,” Cuomo said. “Once you trace, and you find more positives, then you isolate the positives; they’re under quarantine, they can’t go out, they can’t infect anybody else. This entire operation has never been done before.”

In Albany County, Commissioner Whalen has led a similar initiative since early March.

“We’re also going to be partnering with Johns Hopkins and Vital Strategies in putting together that tracing operation,” Cuomo said. “It will be coordinated tri-state and downstate.”

On Wednesday, Cuomo also reported that Trump had agreed to waive the state match for Federal Emergency Management Agency aid, which will save the New York “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“Normally a state has to pay 25 percent of the FEMA cost,” said Cuomo. “That would be a cruel irony for New York and adding insult to injury. New York had the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country, therefore our cost of FEMA was the highest cost in the nation.”