ALBANY COUNTY — Omicron is coming, the governor says, and New York State will be prepared to “act with lightning speed.”

To increase capacity in upstate hospitals, which, unlike those downstate, are filling up since vaccination rates are lower, Kathy Hochul issued an executive order on Friday, declaring a disaster emergency.

Hochul explained at a press conference on Monday afternoon that, as hospitalization rates approach what they were last April, hospitals in target areas will have non-essential, non-urgent procedures limited.

The Capital Region, with just 10 percent of its hospital beds available, is one of the state’s three worst regions. The other two are the Finger Lakes at 9 percent and Central New York at 8 percent.

Albany Medical Center Hospital is the only hospital in Albany County that was listed on Friday, when Hochul signed the executive order, as having 10 percent or fewer of its staffed hospital beds available.

In January, as hospitalizations from COVID-19 surged, St. Peter’s Health Partners outfitted the unused tower of the county’s nursing home to be ready for an overflow of hospitalized patients; the tower beds were not used.

On Tuesday, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy told The Enterprise, “While nothing has been formalized with any individual hospital, should the need arise due to increasing hospitalizations, Albany County will be ready to provide overflow space at our retrofitted tower medical facility, which is now separate from Shaker Place.”

The World Health Organization described the new variant, Omicron, first reported from South Africa on Nov. 24, as a “variant of concern” or VOC, the most serious category.

“This variant has a large number of mutations, some of which are concerning. Preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant, as compared to other VOCs,” the WHO said in a statement, classifying the variant.

The WHO has named the virus’s Variants of Interest and Variants of Concern after letters in the Greek alphabet; Omicron is “O.” The Delta — for “D” — variant had been predominant. Omicron, which is not known to be more severe but is thought to be highly transmissible, has been identified in Belgium, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany, and Britain.

In her Monday press conference, Hochul said, “We have notification that it has arrived in Ontario, which is literally across the bridge from where I live.”

She introduced Dr. Kristen St. George, the director of virology at the state’s Wadsworth Lab, who spoke, through Zoom, saying she had just checked databases and there were no reports of Omicron in New York or anywhere else in the United States.

St. George said her lab has been testing samples of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, since February 2020. Since March 2021, she said, Wadsworth has been sequencing patients’ specimens to monitor for circulating strains in New York State, an ongoing labor-intensive process.

Recently, St. John said, a consortium of four labs in New York State was formed to help with the sequencing so surveillance could be expanded.

All the labs in the state performing PCR tests have been asked to “immediately notify us of any detection of a positive sample that has specific test results characteristic for Omicron and we could then expedite sequencing to specifically identify whether or not it really was.”

The contributions from state clinical labs, sequencing labs, other public health labs across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the state’s epidemiology team collectively “can map a rapid response and help protect the public of New York State,” St. John said.

“We know it’s coming,” said Hochul of Omicron’s arrival in New York. “But here’s the good news: We’re not defenseless.”

She encouraged residents to get vaccinated, to complete their vaccination series, and to get booster shots. Anyone who had a Johnson & Johnson vaccine is eligible after two months; anyone who had two shots of either Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech can get a booster shot after six months.

All three drug companies have announced they are conducting trials to see how their vaccines fare with the Omnicron variant.

In other COVID-related drug news this week, on Tuesday, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted, 13 to 10, to recommend emergency authorization for pills made by Merck for use by COVID patients at risk of severe infections.

Pfizer has also developed an antiviral pill for which FDA review is expected soon.

In addition to its pop-up sites, Hochul said on Monday, the state will be “layering in more mass-vaccination sites.”

Hochul asked New Yorkers, vaccinated or not, to wear masks indoors in public. “I’m asking businesses to encourage the same among their patrons as well as their employees,” she said.

Hochul praised the Erie County executive for imposing a mask mandate and encouraged others to do the same. 

Rather than having individual counties put in restrictions, as is happening in Western New York, McCoy said at a press conference on Nov. 24, “I would prefer the governor to act rather than Albany County act alone.”

Asked about a statewide mask mandate, Hochul said, “We’ll consider all options.” Currently, she said, “I’m very targeted,” indicating she was looking at regional solutions rather than statewide mandates.

 

Hospitals

Hochul predicted a post-Thanksgiving surge and said hospitalizations are “what keeps me up at night, making sure that our hospitals have the capacity to handle the influx of patients, whether it’s from COVID or otherwise.”

“The trend is continuing in a bad direction ...,” Hochul said, displaying a chart showing a rise in hospitalizations. “This should be going down because the vaccine is available.”

Since early August, the state has lost about 4 percent of its bed capacity, she said, while at the same time hospitalization of cases has gone up significantly.

Seventy percent of the bed losses are upstate, Hochul reported. Upstate hospitals lost 10 percent of bed capacity while downstate lost about 2 percent, she said.

There are no hospital-capacity issues on Long Island, in New York City, or in the Mid-Hudson Region. Some downstate hospitals have agreed to temporarily send staff upstate as needed, Hochul said.

She signed the executive order on Friday to allow flexibility, she said.

“The Executive Order will also enable New York State to acquire more quickly any critical supplies to combat the pandemic,” Jeffrey Hammond, deputy director of communications for the governor’s office, said in an email on Tuesday, answering Enterprise questions.

“In the event that a facility is at limited capacity (set at below 10% staffed bed capacity), the facility or the Department may limit non-essential procedures in that facility at the Health Commissioner’s discretion,” Hammond said.

Those protocols will start on Friday, Dec. 3. “And we’ll reassess that again, January 15th,” said Hochul.

As of Friday, the date Hochul signed the state of emergency, 37 hospitals across New York State had 10 percent capacity or less, Hammond said, stressing that the data will change.

In addition to Albany Medical Center in Albany County, three other hospitals in the Capital Region are on the list of 37: Glens Falls Hospital, an independently owned hospital in Warren County; Samaritan Hospital, part of St. Peter’s Health Partners, in Rensselaer County; and Saratoga Hospital, affiliated with Albany Medical Center, in Saratoga County.

“The Department of Health continues to work with hospital systems ahead of the Friday, December 3 date of implementation as well as on additional criteria,” said Hammond.

Essential procedures will continue at the listed hospitals, Hochul said, naming cancer treatment, heart surgery, and treatment of traumatic injuries among others.

She urged residents not to put off preventative procedures but to get them done outside of the hospital system.

Understaffing at nursing homes has affected hospital capacity, Hochul said, because patients can’t be discharged from a hospital to a nursing home if it’s understaffed.

To fill this void, members of the National Guard who are trained as emergency medical technicians will fill in at nursing homes, she said. “We can deploy them in a targeted way,” she said.

For a long-term solution, starting in January, Hochul said, more National Guard members will be trained as EMTs.

Also, student nursing programs will be drawn on. She also said nurses from foreign countries may be called on although that pool, too, is limited.

Asked if the state’s vaccine mandate for health-care workers may have played a part in the staffing shortage, Hochul said, “I will not be backing down on that.”

She said patients are entitled to feel safe from COVID contracted by the people who care for them.

She also said the number-one differential is the close correlation between vaccination rates and hospitalizations. In other words, because a far higher percentage of downstate residents are vaccinated, there is a lower rate of hospitalization.

Hochul also said that 97 percent of the people working in nursing homes or long-term care facilities are vaccinated themselves.

On Tuesday, Hochul announced an agreement with 1199SEIU and the Greater New York Health Care Facilities Association to avert a strike in New York State’s nursing homes. The new, three-year agreement covers worker wages and benefits.

Service Employees International Union 1199 represents 450,000 health-care workers.

“After days of intense discussion and collaboration, I am proud to have facilitated a fair agreement with 1199SEIU and the Greater New York Health Care Facilities Association that protects working people and nursing home residents,” Hochul said in a statement, announcing the agreement.

“In the midst of a deadly public health crisis,” she went on, “it’s imperative that New Yorkers living in long-term care facilities receive the care they deserve. At the same time, we need to ensure the hard-working women and men who work in these facilities are treated with dignity and respect. This agreement is a major step forward.”

As she closed her press conference on Monday, Hochul urged, with the return to requirements, as for masking, “short-term pain in hope of long-term gain.”

For a stronger economic recovery, she said, she doesn’t want to have statewide shutdowns but rather target requirements where needed.

Hochul urged New Yorkers, “Just hang in there with us a little longer.”

 

Food help

On Monday, Hochul announced changes meant to encourage food-insecure older adults and people with disabilities to enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

The SNAP application has been simplified and recertification takes place less frequently and without an interview.

“New York’s senior and disabled communities were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to food insecurity in some cases and exacerbating it in others,” Hochul said in a statement, announcing the changes. “Allowing easier access to SNAP benefits for these groups will help alleviate this stress.”

About 70 percent of eligible older adults and disabled individuals are enrolled to receive benefits, which is significantly lower than the statewide participation rate estimate of roughly 89 percent, according to a release from the governor’s office.

One leading reason proposed for this lower participation is the length and complexity of the form to apply for SNAP. The regular application includes nine pages of questions and information geared at determining a household's eligibility. Because many older individuals and disabled individuals live on fixed incomes and generally experience far fewer household changes, much less information is required to verify their eligibility and calculate benefits. The new application form is a double-sided single sheet.

Studies show that providing SNAP benefits for those 65 and older results in better health outcomes, according to the governor’s office. There is a direct link between SNAP and decreased long-term care placement, health costs, and emergency visits. Receiving SNAP benefits also enables those aged 65 and older to focus their limited resources on paying for other basic needs such as prescriptions and rent.

 

Small businesses

This week, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli issued a report that showed, in the spring of 2020, businesses in New York were more severely impacted by the pandemic than in the rest of the nation.

“In addition,” the report says, “small businesses report facing new challenges with hiring difficulties and with supply chains. Nevertheless, one in five small businesses reported a return to normal operations in October 2021, there have been significant improvements in several sectors, and applications for new businesses are surging, which bodes well for the economic recovery.”

Funding from state grant programs has also begun to flow, and, the reports says, “expeditiously disbursing these funds remains critical to helping New York’s small businesses continue to recover.”

Over the two decades before the start of the pandemic, small businesses demonstrated robust growth in the New York economy. Between 1999 and 2019, the number of small businesses grew by 12.1 percent or 43,510 firms, with the number of employees rising by almost 473,000 or 13 percent, the report says.

Small businesses account for the overwhelming majority of firms in most industry sectors in New York State. They also employ the majority of workers in industry sectors such as accommodation and food services; wholesale trade; real estate; construction; professional, scientific and technical services; and arts, entertainment and recreation, according to the United States Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey.

In two sectors — accommodations and food service, and health care and social assistance — more than 80 percent of small businesses surveyed continued to report negative effects in October 2021. In contrast, the share of small businesses in finance and insurance reporting negative impacts decreased significantly and is now the lowest among the sectors, at 26 percent in October 2021

 

Albany County

Albany County has for months had a “high” rate of COVID-19 transmission, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which means that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, should wear a mask indoors in public.

“Everyone’s done with COVID … but there’s still people dying,” said McCoy in a press conference on Wednesday, the first in a month.

Between Wednesday, Nov. 24, and Tuesday, Nov. 30, Albany County’s 90th week of coping with the coronavirus, six residents succumbed to the virus: two men in their seventies, a man in his eighties, two men in their nineties, and a woman in her nineties.

This brings the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 446.

During his press conference the day before Thanksgiving, McCoy gave figures from a year ago — Oct. 24 to Nov. 24 — before the first vaccine was authorized, that showed better numbers in Albany County than the same time period this year.

Last year, in that time period, there were 1,756 new COVID infections, 113 new hospitalizations, and eight new COVID deaths.

This year, Albany County had 2,764 new infections, 136 new hospitalizations, and 19 new COVID deaths — a difference of more than 1,000 infections, and more than two times the number of deaths, year over year.

McCoy predicted that infection rates would increase after Thanksgiving when many people gather indoors. “It’s alarming,” he said.

Although the full effects of Thanksgiving gatherings won’t be known for a week, McCoy’s prediction played out in his daily COVID-19 releases.

On Friday, as McCoy announced 128 new cases of COVID-19, he said, “This is the third consecutive day we’ve reported new daily COVID infections in the triple digits, after reporting an alarming 188 new cases just yesterday.”

On Saturday, as McCoy announced 82 new cases, he said, “The number of residents currently hospitalized with the virus continues to trend upward to the highest it’s been since February 26.”

On Sunday, as McCoy reported 112 new cases of COVID-19, he was prescient in the statement he issued: “We continue to see a worrying rise in COVID hospitalizations in Albany County, with eight new daily hospitalizations for two consecutive days. We now have the highest number of county residents in the hospital since February 25, and two of those individuals are younger than 25 years old.

“Unfortunately, this was to be expected after the most recent spike in new infections even before the start of the holidays, but we haven’t yet seen the full effect that Thanksgiving gatherings will have on our infection rate. The situation will likely get worse which means more even people sent to the hospital, which could potentially put a strain on our hospital systems in the future.”

On Tuesday, as McCoy announced 131 new cases, he said, “Our numbers continue to move in the wrong direction, with hospitalizations at their highest level since February 23, and the loss of two more county residents to COVID complications.

“There have now been 20 COVID deaths in the county during the month of November, compared to 18 in October and nine in September of this year, and 16 in total during November of last year.

“But we know our best defense against the worst symptoms and illness caused by COVID is the vaccine and the booster shot. Of the 57 county residents currently hospitalized with the virus, 61 percent haven’t received a single shot, 4 percent are partially vaccinated, and 35 percent are fully vaccinated.

On Wednesday, as he announced a whopping 211 new COVID-19 cases, McCoy said, “We are likely just now starting to feel the impacts of Thanksgiving celebrations on our infection rate with the latest surge of new COVID cases, on top of the surge that we were already dealing with before the holiday.

“Today marks the most COVID cases identified in a 24-hour period since January 28, and the most residents hospitalized at one time since February 20. Those in the hospital include two people under the age of 25 years old.

“The majority of those hospitalized with the virus are unvaccinated, and we can’t allow more hospitals to get overwhelmed like we’ve already seen in the region. We need everyone to do their part in protecting themselves, their loved ones and our community. Vaccines and boosters are widely available at a number of locations, including at the clinics that Albany County is hosting with local schools. Please get the shot, wear masks indoors and at any large outdoor gatherings — regardless of vaccination status — get tested, and stay home if you’re experiencing any flu-like symptoms.”

As of Wednesday morning, according to the state’s vaccination tracker, 75.5 percent of Albany County’s 307,117 residents have received at least one dose of vaccine as have 84.8 percent of residents 18 and older while 67.7 percent have completed the series.

Statewide, 78.1 percent of New Yorkers have received at least one dose as have 90.8 percent of New Yorkers 18 and older while 68.4 percent have completed a vaccination series.

The county’s five-day average of new daily positive cases is now up to 122.2.

Albany County’s most recent seven-day average of percent positive rate is now up to 6.2 percent and the Capital Region’s average rate is now up to 7.9 percent.

At his press briefing on Nov. 24, McCoy recalled how last year, the county required a rate lower than 4 percent to allow team sports.

In May 2020, the World Health Organization advised governments that, before reopening, rates of positivity in testing — out of all tests conducted, how many came back positive for COVID-19 — should remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

There are now 588 active cases in Albany County, up from 582 on Tuesday. The number of county residents under quarantine increased to 905 from 858.

There were nine new hospitalizations since Tuesday, and there are now a total of 61 county residents hospitalized with the coronavirus — a net increase of four. Eight of those hospital patients are now in intensive-care units, down from 13 Tuesday.

On Monday, Dec. 13, from 4:30 to 7 p.m., a vaccination clinic will be held at Guilderland Elementary School at 2225 Western Ave. in Guilderland. Vaccinations are by appointment only. Scheduling for 5- to 11-year-olds will be handled by individual schools directly with parents of students. For people 12 and older, first, second, and booster shots of Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech will be offered.

Residents can also receive free Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, including booster shots, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Albany County Department of Health at 175 Green Street. Aside from Wednesdays, appointments are now required.

Albany County continues to deliver vaccines to homebound residents, which includes seniors, disabled individuals, those lacking childcare, and those with other accessibility issues. Anyone who would like to schedule a time for a vaccine appointment should call 518-447-7198.