ALBANY COUNTY — On Thursday, the county suffered its first COVID-19 death since June 24.

The patient was a man in his seventies with underlying health conditions, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said at his Friday morning press briefing.

His death brings Albany County’s toll to 122.

Overnight, the county had another 13 cases of coronavirus disease 2019 confirmed. Four of those cases were linked to a Fourth of July party on Hudson Avenue, bridging to 15 the total of cases linked to that party. Ove 200 college-aged people attended the Albany party in backyards on Hudson Avenue.

The county is asking anyone who was at the party to call the county’s health department and get tested for COVID-19. While many young people have mild cases of COVID-19 or no symptoms at all, they can unwittingly infect older people or people with underlying health conditions, who can suffer severely or die.

Four of the 13 new cases were of health-care workers and two were people “who traveled to states they shouldn’t have gone to,” said McCoy.

New York has a list now of 22 states with high rates of COVID-19. People traveling from those states to New York have to fill out a form on arrival and are to self-quarantine for 14 days. Violators can be fined up to $2,000.

On Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that global experts had cleared New York City for entering the fourth and final phase of reopening on Monday; the city had been the country’s epicenter of the disease and is the last of the state’s 10 regions to reopen.

“The question is,” said Cuomo in making the announcement, “can we control the viral spread coming into New York? But I feel like we’re standing on a beach and we’re looking out at the sea and we see the second wave building in the distance, so I want all New Yorkers to be on high alert. The virus is spreading. It’s all across the country. It’s getting worse and it will have an effect on New York.”

Albany County now has 2,079 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 612 residents under mandatory quarantine, up from 580 on Thursday.

The five-day average for new daily positive cases has decreased to 16.4 from 16.8 yesterday. There are currently 78 active cases, down from 84 yesterday.

So far, 6,310 county residents have completed quarantine, with 2,001 of them having tested positive and recovered.

Two Albany County residents are hospitalized with COVID-19 and the hospitalization rate remains at 0.09 percent.

Meanwhile, Cuomo announced on Friday that the state’s hospitalization number is the lowest it has been since March 18 with 765 New Yorkers hospitalized. 

The Capital Region, which includes Albany County, now has the third-worst percentage of positive tests among the state’s 10 regions: 1.1 percent. The Mohawk Valley is worst with 1.8 percent followed by Western New York with 1.2 percent. The North Country remains lowest at 0.3 percent.

The Capital Region had had the worst percentage, 2.10 percent, on Tuesday. The uptick was caused in part by the Fourth of July party and also by a spate of nursing-home workers testing positive, as well as returning travelers, among others.

McCoy reiterated the message he’s been repeating for months, urging residents to wash their hands, stay six feet from others, and wear a mask if they can’t.

He said the county has been receiving a lot of complaints of people using the rail trail not wearing their masks as they near strangers.

McCoy also went over the new state directive requiring bar customers to also eat food with their drinks and, when sitting at a bar, to stay six feet apart. He encouraged people who see violations to take a picture and send it to the State Liquor Authority at www.sla.ny.gov.

“Only do it if there’s a problem,” he said. “It’s a waste of resources and time if we have to go and chase this down.”