ALBANY COUNTY — While Albany County on Tuesday noted a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases among teenagers, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced far-reaching plans to combat anxieties and hardships caused by the pandemic.

During his press conference in New York City, the governor projected these words on one of the blue boards he typically uses at briefings: “Treatment for anxiety is: Facts, Logic, Action.”

Cuomo had said on Monday that rapid-testing machines would be deployed in areas with high rates of positive tests for COVID-19. Out of the 1,740 ZIP codes in New York State, 20 have positivity rates of 5 percent or higher, primarily in Rockland and Orange counties as well as in Brooklyn.

The statewide rate, with the hot-spot ZIP codes included, was at 1.3 percent. Based on Monday’s test results, the Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, remains just below 1 percent at 0.9 percent.

“If you look at those clusters and you look at those ZIP codes, you will see there’s an overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities. That is a fact,” Cuomo said at the press briefing.

He went on, “I will be meeting with them to talk about it. This is a public health concern for their community. It’s also a public health concern for surrounding communities. I’ve said from day one, these public health rules apply to every religion, atheists — it just applies to every citizen of the State of New York, period.”

Cuomo also said on Tuesday, in an interview with Kristen Shaughnessy of NY1 News, that pictures have been circulating showing a lack of compliance at religious ceremonies; houses of worship are, by law, to be used only at half capacity.

“The law is there to protect you and the local officials are supposed to be enforcing it and we need the help of the community,” Cuomo told Shaughnessy. “And look, we do this because we love the Orthodox Jewish community and, if you have a high infection rate, people are going to get sick and people are going to die, and it’s out of love and that’s why we do the compliance work. It’s out of love. But I need the local governments to help.”

During his press briefing, Cuomo also stressed, “Mask-wearing is a state law” and he called on local governments to enforce it.

In New York City and across the state, nation, and world, Cuomo said of the pandemic, “The level of disruption has been extraordinary … You’re going to have a lot of PTSD from this period of time,” he said of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’re already seeing substance abuse up, mental-health issues up,” Cuomo said. “This was a traumatic period. Don’t underestimate it, and you’re going to see the consequences of that trauma for months if not years in many different ways. Acknowledge that. The disruption causes anxiety, yes.”

Cuomo mentioned, as he had on Monday, that a union of New York City principals had a no-confidence vote on the safety of schools and called on the state to run them. Cuomo said the teachers’ union and the mayor said the city’s schools are safe and should open.

“How do we justify the principals’ union versus the teachers’ union versus the mayor?” asked Cuomo, answering himself, “We get the facts.”

Moving on to another anxiety-producing problem — crime — Cuomo said that denial won’t solve the problem.

“Shootings with victims are up over 100 percent. That’s why New Yorkers are concerned about crime,” said Cuomo. “The percent of shooting victims: 86 percent Black and brown … The tension post-George Floyd’s murder between police and the community has never been higher. It’s all across the nation.”

He said that 146 jurisdictions across the state are, as per his executive order, reforming their police departments in order to maintain state aid. Their plans are due by April.

Cuomo on Tuesday called for “a more multifaceted public safety function that has mental-health response, substance-abuse response, a domestic-violence response, and then for violent crime, where someone's life is at risk, yes, a person with a gun and a badge who’s equipped to arrest. That has to be redesigned,” he said.

After crime, Cuomo moved on to the economy. “I’m not accepting the premise that New York State or New York City should pay. We didn’t do anything wrong. The federal government should pay. The federal government was wrong,” said Cuomo. “It’s the federal government that allowed us to be ambushed by COVID.”

He repeated his familiar assertion that, for three months, planeloads of people were flying into New York City from Europe, where the virus had migrated, while the federal government was still focused on China.

Cuomo asserted that, if Joe Biden beats President Donald Trump in the presidential race and if Democrats win the Senate in the Nov. 3 election, New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer would become the Senate leader and “make sure New York is covered in the state and local package.”

Later on Tuesday, Cuomo, as the new chairman of the National Governors Association, put out a statement with Vice Chairman Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, calling on Congress to prioritize local and state aid.

“Every major economist, regardless of party or ideological bent, came to the same conclusion after the 2007-09 financial crisis: The lack of support for state and local governments slowed the nation's economic growth for more than a decade …,” their statement said. “We appreciate the House of Representatives for putting forth a new proposed relief package last night ... This is a national problem, and it demands a bipartisan and national solution.”

Cuomo rounded out his press briefing by speaking of two more anxiety-producing problems — cleanliness and homelessness.

He said garbage is piling up in New York City and, if the city’s sanitation department can’t handle it, he would deploy the National Guard.

On homelessness, Cuomo said, “It’s getting cold … there are homeless people living on sidewalks, living under scaffolding. There’s no reason for it.”

He described homelessness as a public-health concern both for passers-by and for the people living on the streets. Cuomo said homeless people need to be moved to shelters for their own health as well as the public’s and that the state is “putting out guidance on how to operate a safe shelter.”

Finally, Cuomo asserted, that Americans are wary of taking a COVID-19 vaccine, once one is developed, because “the vaccine process has been politicized.”

He went on about the federal Food and Drug Administration, “The president said the FDA is political. Now what happens? The FDA approves it while the president says it was political. The president overrides the FDA and then for sure it’s political because I never saw a doctor certificate hanging on the wall when I went to visit President Trump.”

Last week, Cuomo said he would set up a clinical advisory task force in New York State to review vaccines for safety and efficacy. On Tuesday, he appointed seven doctors and science experts to review vaccines authorized by the federal government for distribution.

“Polls that say half the American people wouldn’t take the vaccine right now because they don’t believe it’s safe,” Cuomo said. “I want to be able to say to New Yorkers it is safe, take it, and I want to have the best distribution because ideally we want to be the first COVID-safe state in the nation.”

Albany County

On Tuesday morning, as Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy announced 11 new cases of COVID-19 — six of them related to the University at Albany — he noted a local spike in cases for teenagers and cited a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In light of the recent CDC study that found teenagers may be far more susceptible to the coronavirus than younger children, we looked at some of our own data and found that this age group saw a relatively large spike recently,” McCoy said in a statement, announcing the county’s new numbers. “In the last week, the number of positive cases among 10- to 19-year-olds shot up by 12.5 percent, compared to the 5.1-percent increase among the 20-to-29 year-old age group.”

The 20-to-29 age group had long been the age decade in Albany County that most frequently reported positive test results.

“There could be a number of explanations for this,” McCoy’s statement went on, “but with many college campuses still operating and many children going back to school for in-person lessons, we need to continue to monitor this troubling trend and ensure parents are able to get their children tested.”

On Tuesday evening, the county’s COVID-19 dashboard showed the 10-to-19 age group had 304 cases; the 20-to-29 age group had 715 cases.

Of the 11 new cases announced on Tuesday,  eight had close contact with someone infected with the disease and three did not have a clear source of infection detected at this time.

While the county reported six new UAlbany cases, it noted the case count fluctuates 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.

The SUNY COVID-19 tracker, as of Tuesday evening, showed UAlbany had 10 cases since Sept. 26, the start of a new two-week period.

If more than 100 cases are reported for people who study, work, or live on campus in a discrete two-week period, the university has to move to remote-only learning for two weeks.

Since tracking began on Aug. 28, UAlbany has had an estimated total of 130 positive test results for COVID-19.

While the vast majority of liquor-license suspensions have been downstate, one in Albany County was announced in a press release from the governor on Tuesday. Among the compliance checks led by the State Police and the State Liquor Authority, Johnnie’s on Broadway at 1278 Broadway in Albany was found to be in violation.

On Sept. 18, SLA undercover investigators saw about 70 patrons without face coverings, ignoring social distancing, the release says; drinks were served without food, as required, and some people were dancing. The bar’s owner had been warned on July 22 about violations, the release said.

Albany County now has 2,956 confirmed cases of COVID-19. The number of residents under mandatory quarantine increased to 889 from 868 on Monday. The five-day average for new daily positives has decreased to 16.8 from 17.4. There are now 98 active cases in the county, up slightly from 96 on Sunday.

So far, 12,259 county residents have completed quarantine. Of those who completed quarantine, 2,858 of them had tested positive and recovered. 

Four county residents remain hospitalized with COVID-19, and the county’s hospitalization rate remains at 0.13 percent.

The county’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 134.