ALBANY COUNTY — After a nearly two-month hiatus, Albany County is once again designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having a “medium” rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Throughout the summer, Albany County, like most of the rest of the nation, was labeled by the CDC as having a “low” rate.

Then as people moved indoors, in late September, Albany County was labeled with a “medium” hospitalization rate for three weeks in a row, which then subsided as the county resumed its “low” status.

A “low” level means fewer than 10 hospital admissions per 100,000 of population while “medium” is between 10.0 and 19.9, and “high” means there were more than 20 hospital admissions per 100,000 of population.

While the vast majority of counties in the nation — about 80 percent — are now at a “low” level, that number has decreased by 5 percent from the previous week as the percentage of “medium” counties has increased to just over 17 percent and counties with a “high” level have risen to over 2 percent.

Based on data through Nov. 25, new hospital admissions of confirmed COVID-19 patients for the past week in Albany County totaled 52. The new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people for the past week was 10.4, an increase of 6.1 percent from the prior week.

Of New York’s 62 counties, 17 are labeled “medium”: Suffolk County on Long Island; Yates, Seneca, Wayne, Livingston, Monroe, Genesee, Orleans, Erie, and Niagara countries in western New York; and next to or north of Albany County in eastern New York — Rensselaer, Saratoga, Washington, Warren, and Hamilton counties.

Still, the hospitalization rates are nowhere near where they were with the surge caused by the arrival of the Omicron variant or before vaccinations were available. 

Meanwhile, the state’s health department, which tracks the distribution of COVID-19 variants statewide, has charted an uptick of new cases since early November.

The health department’s graph of new cases, logged in two-week intervals, shows a relatively flat line in the spring until the start of July when a steep and steady rise started, peaking in mid-September and then declining at a similar rate until early November when it began to rise again.

The current dominant sublineage, at 29 percent statewide, is HV.1. That is followed by the formerly dominant Omicron sublineage of XBB.1.9 at 17 percent.

Nationwide, the CDC reports, HV.1 now makes up about 30 percent of new cases, having  emerged in the United States at the end of the summer and grown steadily since.

Since the system for recording positive COVID tests has fallen by the wayside, tracking hospitalizations and deaths becomes the method for charting the course of the virus.

For deaths, the CDC reports New York state, with data as of Nov. 30, had 2.6 percent of its deaths in the past week due to COVID-19, an increase of 8.3 percent from the week prior.

This groups New York with nine other states — Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, and California — that have had 2.0 to 3.9 percent of their deaths in the past week from COVID-19.

Only four states have a higher death rate, of 4.0 to 5.9 percent: Maine, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Colorado.

Nationwide, the death rate from COVID is 2.9 percent, the same as the week prior.

The CDC continues to urge everyone six months or older to get the new COVID shots made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, both messenger RNA vaccines. The new vaccine was formulated to combat recent strains, similar to annual flu shots.

The updated COVID-19 vaccines are “formulated to more closely target currently circulating variants and to provide better protection against serious consequences of COVID-19, including hospitalization and death,” said the Food and Drug Administration in approving the new shots.

The United States government in previous pandemic years paid for COVID shots, but with the federal emergency ending in May, Medicare and private insurers are now expected to pay for the shots.

In July, the CDC said it would launch a “Bridge Access Program” this fall “to help ensure that millions of uninsured and underinsured American adults continue to have access to no-cost COVID-19 vaccinations.” The bridge program is scheduled to end in December 2024.

A release from Health and Human Services said, “There are an estimated 25-30 million adults without insurance in the U.S., and there are additional adults whose insurance will not provide free coverage for COVID-19 vaccines after these products transition to the commercial market for procurement, distribution, and pricing, later this fall.”

HHS went on, “Under the management and oversight of CDC, the Bridge Access Program – for a limited time – will allow adults who are uninsured or underinsured to receive free COVID-19 vaccinations.”

New Yorkers are also being encouraged to get flu shots. At a press conference on Wednesday, Governor Kathy Hochul said, “The number of flu cases in the state of New York is now defined as prevalent in the state, that’s a new category.”

Flu cases have increased 25 percent over one week, she said, and hospitalizations are up 30 percent.

“Very, very sad to report that there have been two pediatric deaths related to flu,” said Hochul, urging “everyone” to “get their flu shots.”