ALBANY COUNTY — Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said on Monday that, at his next control-room meeting, he was going to ask about a slowdown but not a shutdown.

Local officials in each of the state’s 10 regions have regular discussions with state officials on COVID protocols, referred to as control-room meetings.

“Under the old metrics,” McCoy said at his press conference on Monday, “we would be in the red zone and closed in a lot of areas.”

After regional economies reopened following New York’s statewide shutdown in the spring, Governor Andrew Cuomo adopted a micro-cluster approach to tamp down outbreaks of COVID-19.

Red, orange, and yellow zones were declared with red zones, the most severe, being akin to a shutdown. Albany County had been on the cusp of being declared a precautionary yellow zone, the least restrictive of the three, when Cuomo announced a winter plan.

The winter plan, instead of determining zones solely on infection rates, instead focused on hospital capacity as well.

McCoy said that, although vaccinations are underway in the county, it probably won’t be until September that enough people will have been vaccinated to resume normal life.

“Our numbers are going through the roof …,” McCoy said on Monday. “January’s going to be rough … It’s scary.”

The earlier lockdown, he said, had a bad effect on residents with addictions and mental-health problems. “Our suicide rate went through the roof,” said McCoy.

He said he would encourage the control room to have not a shutdown but a slowdown “or it's just going to be a brutal month.”

 McCoy had begun his press briefing by announcing two more deaths of county residents from COVID-19: a man and a woman, both in their eighties.

This brings the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 194.

“It’s tough times,” said McCoy.

He also called the 113 residents currently hospitalized with the disease “alarming” and noted that 21 are under intensive care.

As of Monday morning, Albany County has had 9,284 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 221 new cases since Sunday, McCoy said.

Of the new cases, 28 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, 188 did not have a clear source of infection identified at this time, and five are health-care workers or residents of congregate settings.

The five-day average for new daily positives increased to 200.4 from 197.2. There are now 1,605 active cases in the county, up slightly from 1,604 on Sunday.

The number of county residents under mandatory quarantine increased to 3,197 from 3,119. So far, 31,518 residents have completed quarantine. Of those, 7,679 of them had tested positive and recovered.

Statewide, the infection rate, based on Sunday’s test results, was 5.39 percent, according to a release from the governor’s office. The Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, had a rate of 6.92 percent.

The Southern Tier continues to have the lowest rate at 2.39 percent while the Mohawk Valley has the highest rate at 8.46 percent.

The Capital Region currently has 348 residents hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 0.03 percent of the population, and leaves 25 percent of the region‘s hospital beds available. Statewide,  0.03 percent of New Yorkers are hospitalized, leaving 30 percent of hospital beds available.

The Capital Region has 223 beds in intensive-care units of which 177 are now occupied, leaving 27 percent available. Statewide, 32 percent of ICU beds are available.