County has 22 new COVID-19 cases, 2 from AES

Guilderland Students line up to go inside to new classrooms at Westmere Elementary on their first day of school this fall.

ALBANY COUNTY — Saturday morning, Albany County announced 22 new cases of COVID-19; presumably two of them were related to Altamont Elementary School.

The Guilderland schools superintendent, Marie Wiles, emailed a letter to the school community Friday when the first case was announced and then again Saturday after the second case, in a different household, had been announced on Friday evening.

“At this time, all schools remain open for in-person instruction,” Wiles wrote. “Students who are directed to self-quarantine will temporarily switch to remote learning until their quarantine has ended and they are cleared to return to campus for in-person instruction. Here is a helpful resource provided by the Albany County Department of Health of protocols for COVID-19 screening and quarantine.”

As of Saturday morning, the county executive’s office announced, Albany County has 2,804 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Of the new cases, 19 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, two had traveled, and one did not have a clear source of transmission detected at this time.

Fifteen of the new cases are associated with the University at Albany, which has had a recent outbreak. By executive order, state campuses must move to remote learning for two weeks if they have 100 or more positive tests for COVID-19 in a two-week period.

According to the State University of New York COVID-19 Tracker, set up to monitor the state’s 64 campuses, as of Saturday evening, UAlbany has had 68 cases so far in the period beginning Sept. 12 and ending Sept. 225.

The university is counting in discrete, rather than rolling, two-week periods. Since Aug. 28, the tracker says, UAlbany has had an estimated total of 117 coronavirus 2019 cases.

The county’s health department is tallying the cases of students, staff, or faculty that work or live or attend classes on campus.

Albany County currently has 765 residents under quarantine, up from 710. The five-day average for new daily positives dropped slightly to 20.4 from 20.6. There are now 125 active cases in the county, down from 129 on Friday.

So far, 11,084 people have completed quarantine. Of those who completed quarantine, 2,679 of them had tested positive and recovered.

Seven county residents remain hospitalized with COVID-19 and the hospitalization rate is down to 0.24 percent.

Albany County’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 134.

Also on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new record-high number of test results — 110,444 — were reported to New York State on Friday — 0.89 of the test results were positive.

The Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, had an infection rate of 0.8 percent. Three of the state’s 10 regions had rates of 1 percent or higher: Long Island, Mid-Hudson, and New York City. The north Counter, at 0.3 percent, as usual, had the lowest rate.

 

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