ALBANY COUNTY — Three days after the county issued advisories for mask-wearing indoors, Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday morning made it a statewide requirement unless businesses or venues implement a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for entry.

The measure goes into effect on Monday, Dec. 13, and will run until Jan. 15 — after the holiday season — when the state will re-evaluate based on conditions then. 

Hochul noted that, for weeks, she has warned more steps would be taken because of increasing cases, reduced hospital capacity, and insufficient vaccination rates in some areas.

Albany County has seen a surge of infection and Albany Medical Center Hospital met the governor’s threshold of not having more than 10 percent of its staffed hospital beds available, meaning that elective procedures are on hold at Albany Med until at least mid-January.

On Tuesday, Albany County executive Daniel McCoy had joined with Schenectady county’s manager in announcing mask advisories. McCoy said then that he had contacted leaders in the other Capital Region counties and none of the others would agree. The advisories were not mandated and had no enforcement mechanism.

A violation of the state requirement “is subject to all civil and criminal penalties, including a maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation,” according to the governor’s office. Local health departments are being asked to enforce these requirements. 

Albany County’s health department, like many others, has for two years been inundated with added work as it identifies and traces each case of COVID-19 — as of Friday, 36,020 cases — quarantining people who have been exposed, as well as educating the public and holding vaccine clinics.

Mary Rozak, spokeswoman for McCoy’s office, told The Enterprise on Friday, when asked how the health department would enforce the mask requirements, “Everything is under review … We are expecting further guidance from the state’s health department that I hope will come out tomorrow.”

Enforcement of mandates under the Cuomo administration was left to local law enforcement, Rozak noted, which was a challenge. “The sheriff said, after a complaint, sometimes by the time you got there, the offending parties had put on masks or left,” Rozak recalled.

Although the county’s health department has staff that perform enforcement duties, for example, with restaurant inspections, those are regularly scheduled, set for a predetermined time, said Rozak. “This is a whole different ball game,” she said.

Reaction against the mask mandate was swift from some Republicans.

Four in 10 Republicans remain unvaccinated, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll published Dec. 2. Consequently, according to a New York Times analysis, the COVID-19 death rate is much higher in heavily Republican counties than in Democratic counties.

GOP Assemblyman Chris Tague, who represents rural parts of Albany County along with Greene and Schoharie counties, objected on Friday to the statewide mandate, saying, “It is despicable that Gov. Hochul has decided to threaten our people and businesses with a $1,000 fine for any incidents of noncompliance. This mandate will be disastrous for our small businesses, which have had this mandate suddenly thrown into their laps during the critical holiday sales period, and will stifle our collective recovery as a state.”

Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt issued a statement Friday evening, saying, “To be clear, today’s half-baked announcement from Governor Hochul is a complete reversal from her previous comments, and she is now attempting to mandate that local governments and businesses do the impossible.

“Like her predecessor, I believe the Governor has overstepped her authority with this order. I am reviewing options with my colleagues to rescind this authority and restore these public health decisions to local communities, where they belong.”

Speaking of hold-outs against vaccination, Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin said at Hochul’s press conference on Thursday that he has seen, in his travels to “Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo — a number of our communities that are more Republican-leaning — there has been a lot of resistance as well.”

“Some of it has been politically driven,” Benjamin said. “And one of the things that we would like to try to do is to find ways to have conversations, to take the partisanship out of getting vaccinated, wearing a mask, and keeping us all safe.”

The New York Association of Convenience Stores issued a statement on Friday saying, “Experience has shown that, when our stores are thrust into the role of mask police, bad things can and do happen, including sporadic violence directed at employees just trying to do their job.

“For now, we ask the cooperation of our valued customers as we strive to implement this policy in a manner that keeps our stores accessible and our team members safe. And we hope our state leaders will reconsider the wisdom of potentially placing our essential workers in harm’s way.”

Local Democrats favored the mandate.

“I have continually said that any kind of mask or vaccine requirement would only be truly effective if it’s done at least on a regional basis,” McCoy said in a statement on Friday, applauding Hochul’s mask mandate and noting “new daily cases of COVID spike here in Albany County, and across the Capital Region and the state.”

“As governor, my two top priorities are to protect the health of New Yorkers and to protect the health of our economy,” said Hochul in a statement, making the announcement. “The temporary measures I am taking today will help accomplish this through the holiday season. We shouldn’t have reached the point where we are confronted with a winter surge, especially with the vaccine at our disposal, and I share many New Yorkers’ frustration that we are not past this pandemic yet.

“I want to thank the more than 80 percent of New Yorkers who have done the right thing to get fully vaccinated. If others will follow suit, these measures will no longer be necessary.”

Since Thanksgiving, the statewide seven-day average case rate has increased by 43 percent and hospitalizations have increased by 29 percent, according to the governor’s office. While the percentage of New Yorkers fully vaccinated continues to increase — gaining 2 percent from Thanksgiving weekend to now — the uptick is not fast enough to completely curb the spread of the virus, particularly among communities with low vaccination coverage.

The vaccine is free and widely available.

In Albany County as elsewhere, the majority of people now hospitalized with COVID-19 and dying from the virus are unvaccinated.

“Community spread requires a community-minded solution, as the Omicron variant emerges and the overwhelmingly dominant Delta variant continues to circulate,” said the state’s health commissioner, Mary Bassett, in a statement. “We have the tools we need to protect against the virus — and now we must ensure we use them.

“There are tools each individual can use, and there are actions we can take as government. Getting vaccinated protects you, and wearing a mask is how we will better protect each other. Both vaccination and mask-wearing are needed to slow this COVID-19 winter surge.”

Rules

The governor’s office outlined the following rules in making the mask-mandate announcement.

Businesses and venues that implement a proof-of-vaccination requirement can accept Excelsior Pass, Excelsior Pass Plus, SMART Health Cards issued outside of New York State, or a CDC Vaccination Card.

In accordance with the CDC’s definition of fully vaccinated, full-course vaccination is defined as 14 days past an individual’s last vaccination dose in their initial vaccine series (14 days past the second shot of a two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine; 14 days past the one-shot Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine).

The state also accepts vaccines approved by the World Health Organization for these purposes. Parents and guardians can retrieve and store an Excelsior Pass or Excelsior Pass Plus for children or minors under legal guardianship.

Businesses and venues that implement a mask requirement must ensure all patrons 2 years and older wear a mask at all times while indoors.

Unvaccinated individuals continue to be responsible for wearing masks, in accordance with federal CDC guidance. Further, the state’s masking requirements continue to be in effect for pre-K to grade 12 schools, public transit, homeless shelters, correctional facilities, nursing homes, and health care settings per CDC guidelines.

New York State and the state’s health department continue to strongly recommend mask-wearing in all public indoor settings as an added layer of protection, even when not required. Children aged 2 to 5 who remain ineligible for vaccination must wear a proper-fitting mask.

New Yorkers can retrieve their Excelsior Pass or Excelsior Pass Plus at https://epass.ny.gov/home. Businesses and venues can download the Excelsior Pass Scanner app — free for any business nationwide and available in more than ten languages.

Newest numbers

McCoy reported 214 new cases of COVID-19 in his Friday morning release. The county’s five-day average of new daily cases is now up to 182.6. 

There are now 708 active cases in Albany County, down from 751 on Thursday. The number of county residents under quarantine increased to 1,347 from 1,339.

There were seven new hospitalizations since Thursday, and there are still 54 county residents currently with the coronavirus. Ten of those hospital patients are now in intensive-care units, unchanged from Thursday.

As of Tuesday, 76.2 percent of all Albany County residents have received at least the first dose of the vaccine, and 68.8 percent have been fully vaccinated. The first-dose vaccination rate for county residents who are 18 and older is at 85.3 percent.

Albany County’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 456.

There are now 23 reported cases statewide of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, according to the governor’s office. The majority, 15, are in New York City. There are four confirmed cases in Suffolk County, two in Oneida County, and one each in Broome and Westchester counties.