ALBANY COUNTY — Fall has arrived and, with it, worries about handling COVID-19.

On Monday, Governor Andrew Cuomo detailed an uptick of clusters in a handful of ZIP codes and said the state will deploy 200 rapid testing machines to those sites — in Brookly, Orange County, Rockland County, and the SouthernTier.

A single ZIP code in Rockland County, the highest noted for Sunday’s results, had 30 percent of COVID-19 tests — 63 out of 209 — come back positive.

Statewide, 1.5 percent of Sunday’s test results were positive. For the Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, the rate was 0.9 percent.

The Albany County Executive’s Office announced nine new positive cases on Monday morning.

“We’re coming into the fall and all the health experts said we have to be careful about the fall,” Cuomo said on Monday during a conference call with the press. “People go indoors, colleges open, flu season, etcetera.

“We have spikes in other states. You have states: Wisconsin is 18 percent positive; Iowa is 15 percent; Utah, 12 percent; Missouri, 12 percent; Florida, 10 percent; California and Illinois, about 4 percent.”

He went on about specific clusters in New York State, “There’s a nursing home in Steuben County; there’s a church gathering in Chemung County that created issues; and a pub in Broome County. The point of the tests is just this. It is being able to pinpoint and identify the clusters to find where the cases are coming from.”

Cuomo also said, “We have the quarantine in place and we have a global spike — France, Spain, Israel are seeing spikes … that’s the overall environment of the fall and a nationwide spike and a global spike.”

Consequently, Cuomo said he was signing an executive order requiring the state’s health department to alert travelers there will be a mandatory quarantine for any Level 2 or Level 3 country — “that is all but 31 countries on the globe right now,” said Cuomo.

He also announced that he is extending to Jan. 1 the executive order known as the State’s Safe Harbor Act, which protects tenants from COVID-related residential evictions and foreclosures.

Finally, Cuomo noted that a union of principals from New York City schools has taken a no-confidence vote in the New York City Board of Education.

“They’ve asked the state to take over control,” said Cuomo.

Cuomo said daily COVID-19 testing and reporting of numbers will be done.  “The numbers will show if there’s a problem and we’ll then act accordingly,” he said.
 

Nursing homes seek federal funds

With nearly all of the initial Healthcare Provider Relief Fund from CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] Act spent and COVID-19 cases rising in 22 states, the United States will be unprepared heading into cold and flu season, according to the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, which represents more than 14,000 nursing homes and assisted-living centers across the country that provide care to approximately 5 million people each year.

In Albany County, the majority of the county’s 134 COVID-19 deaths have been of nursing-home residents.

The association, in a press release, warned Congress that, if another federal funding package isn’t passed, health-care providers “could find themselves less than completely prepared heading into the cold and flu season, as well as underfunded to handle another major spike in COVID cases.”

With 70 percent of the $175 billion Provider Relief Fund provided in April by the CARES Act already distributed and remaining funds likely to be allocated by early October, health care providers, including long-term care facilities, will need additional funds to continue its response to the COVID pandemic heading into the cold and flu season, which provides new challenges, the association said.

“Coronavirus cases in the U.S. are beginning to rebound following weeks of reported declines and warnings from top U.S. health officials that the country could be vulnerable to fresh outbreaks coinciding with the forthcoming flu season,” the release quoted Michael T. Osterholm, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist, as saying.

President of the association, Mark Parkinson, called on Congress to provide an additional $100 billion for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Provider Relief Fund, which is accessible for all health care providers impacted by COVID-19.

New antibody test

A COVID-19 antibody test that provides results in 30 minutes was announced on Monday by SUNY Polytechnic Institute in partnership with Ciencia Inc. and the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center.

The test, based on research led by SUNY Poly Empire Innovation Professor of Nanobioscience Nate Cady, reveals who has been infected previously as compared to those who have not been infected by COVID-19.

The test uses dried blood spots, requiring only a small droplet of blood from a standard finger prick. Because dried blood spots remain stable, they can be transported by mail without any refrigeration to a testing facility.

Such a system for commercial use could be developed within a year, according to a release from SUNY Poly.

Newest numbers

As of Monday morning, Albany county has 2,946 confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to a release from the county executive’s office.

Among the nine new cases, seven had close contact with someone infected with the disease and two did not have a clear source of infection detected at this time.

Five of the nine new cases are associated with the University at Albany.

The SUNY COVID-19 Tracker, which the state set up to report daily on COVID-19 cases across the state’s 64 college and university campuses, shows just 2 cases for UAlbany for the two-week period beginning Sept. 26.

The state requires campuses that have 100 cases or more in a two-week period to move to remote clases for two weeks. Only cases of staff, faculty, or students who live or work or study on campus are being counted toward the total, and they are being segmented into discrete two-week periods rather than rolling two-week periods.

The tracker reports that, since testing was first reported on Aug. 28, UAlbany has had an estimated 132 cases.

“Please note that our overall case count will fluctuate as the CommCare records for college students are transferred to the county in which they are isolating for their daily monitoring and then transferred back to Albany County for the final case count,” said the release from the county executive’s office.

Albany County currently has 868 residents under quarantine, down from 901 on Sunday. The five-day average for new daily positives has decreased to 17.4 from 18.8. There are now 96 active cases in the county, down from 112 on Sunday.

So far, 12,141 county residents have completed quarantine. Of those who completed quarantine, 2,850 of them had tested positive and recovered.

Four county residents, up from three on Sunday, are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, and the hospitalization rate increased to 0.13 percent from 0.10 percent on Sunday.