ALBANY COUNTY — The president in his speech on Tuesday had advice similar to what New Yorkers had heard earlier in the week from their governor and that Albany County’s executive has also given.

“If you are vaccinated and follow precautions that we all know well,” said President Joe Biden, addressing the nation, “you should feel comfortable celebrating Christmas and the holidays as you planned.”

On Saturday, as Governor Kathy Hochul visited a state vaccination site at Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, she said, “We want people to reconnect with their families, so critically important emotionally, particularly for our older residents, people who’ve been suffering from isolation during most of this, we need those connections and there is a very, very, very safe way to do it … which is simply getting people boosted and continuing to wear the mask.”

This is in contrast to last year’s holiday season when vaccines were not widely available and gatherings were not advised.

On Wednesday, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy, reporting the week’s 10th virus-related death and the county’s second-highest ever daily count of new COVID infections, 299, said, “As we approach Christmas and New Year’s, I’m strongly urging everyone to get vaccinated and get their booster shots, to wear masks indoors, and to get a COVID test before they gather with family and friends.”

None of these leaders — from the local, state, and federal levels — minimized the risks of the latest variant of concern, the highly contagious Omicron variant. On Monday, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the Omicron variant now accounts for about 70 percent of new cases in the United States.

Rather, the leaders stressed the importance of getting vaccinated and boosted as well as wearing masks.

Earlier this month, New York’s acting health commissioner, Mary Bassett, urged people planning to gather for the holidays, “Plan around the most vulnerable.” This includes the elderly and children under 5 who are not eligible for a vaccine. Everyone else should be vaccinated, said Bassett, imploring, “Put them in a circle of protection.”

Bassett urged mask-wearing as well as vaccination. “Vaccination is how we protect ourselves,” she said. “Masking is how we protect each other.”

“If you’re not fully vaccinated … you’re at a high risk of getting sick,” said Biden on Tuesday, adding, “Almost everyone who has died of COVID-19 in the past many months has been unvaccinated.”

McCoy on Friday had reported a 200-percent week-to-week jump in vaccination as the winter surge continues to mount. “When you consider the level of community spread we’re experiencing right now,” he said, “it’s important to realize how much worse this situation could be without easy access to a vaccine that dramatically reduces your chances of hospitalization and death after contracting the virus.”

 

Winter plans

Both Hochul and Biden elaborated this week on their winter plans for dealing with the virus.

In joining the battle with Omicron, the White House says there will be increased support for hospitals with an additional 1,000 troops deployed to those burdened with COVID cases and emergency response teams being sent to six states: Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Vermont. 

Other support, from medical experts to ambulances, will be provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Critical supplies, including hundreds of millions of masks and 100,000 ventilators are ready to be shipped from the Strategic National Stockpile, the White House says, and there is to be “robust access to free testing,” including at-home tests.

Additional clinics are being set up to administer vaccinations and booster shots along with surge pharmacy teams to meet high demand, the White House says.

At the state level, Hochul announced on Monday that New York is making $65 million available to counties to cover costs associated with state protocols — at least $1 million will be available to small counties and up to $2 million for larger counties, Hochul said. The money can be used for a wide variety of initiatives like purchasing masks, or putting up signs, or setting up call centers for people to make complaints.

Hochul last week had put in place a requirement that all New Yorkers, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public unless they are at a venue or business that has implemented a vaccine requirement.

Bassett was not at the governor’s New York City press conference as Hochul outlined her winter plan because, Hochul said, Bassett has tested positive, through a rapid test, for COVID. 

“Of course, she is vaccinated and boosted so this could be a breakthrough case,” said Hochul, noting Bassett is “feeling fine” and will take a PCR test to confirm the diagnosis.

Hochul shared the diais with Kathryn Garcia, director of State Operations, and Jackie Bray, commissioner for the Division of Homeland Security.

Garcia said that 5 million over-the-counter at-home tests for COVID will be coming to the state before Jan. 1.

About 2 million will go to school districts, another million tests will go to county emergency managers, 1.6 million will go to New York City, and 400,000 will go to state vaccine sites.

Another 5 million are expected in January, she said.

“We do call upon the federal government to invoke the Defense Production Act, to get manufacturers producing more over-the-counter tests, and we’ll make sure that they have the letter out the door today,” said Garcia.

Hochul said that keeping schools open is a priority. Part of the winter surge plan, she said, is to follow test-to-stay protocols so students can use a rapid test rather than a PCR test to return to class.

Now, Hochul said, it’s disruptive to education and for parents to have students home for a long time if someone in their class tests positive for the virus. Under the new protocol, students in a classroom where someone has tested positive will be sent home with rapid tests in their backpacks.

She expects the new protocol to go into effect in January.

The state is also organizing a symposium for presidents of private and state colleges “to talk about getting back our college students when they return under normal circumstances a little bit later in January and making sure they follow the same return protocols,” said Hochul.

Bray, who coordinated hospital surge capacity during the height of COVID for New York City, noted that there are over 1,800 testing sites in the state, which can be located at coronavirus.health.ny.gov. 

She also said, “We’re bringing online a testing portal where New Yorkers can order at-home PCR tests. They’ll be mailed overnight mail. You swab yourself, you put them back in the prepaid envelope, and you get your results within 48 hours.”

Details on that program will be available at the end of the week, Bray said.

Hochul said in a statement on Tuesday evening, “The President and I spoke again today about how to address this surge, and I’m grateful that he is responding to our requests for additional personnel to support our hospitals and health systems, including the deployment of 30 ambulances with staff to upstate areas; new mass testing sites, including the first one to be operational in New York City before Christmas; and rapid tests sent directly to Americans in their homes.”

 

Omicron

At a Dec. 16 press conference, Bassett showed a series of charts and graphs, indicating the effect Omicron could have.

Bassett’s first graph showed last summer’s lull in transmission until the start of the surge caused by Delta, a variant first described in India, the fourth variant of concern labeled by the World Health Organization, which was dominant in the United States.

“And now we’re at the winter surge, something that was anticipated because as the weather gets colder, more people go inside, and also more people were mixing in ways that they didn’t do a year ago,” said Bassett, describing the current surge as “substantial.”

“Hospitalizations are the highest that we’ve seen in months and are still going up,” she said.

At the same time, the rate for uptake of vaccinations had flattened.

Bassett then presented tables explaining exponential spread of a virus.

It is thought that each person infected with the Delta variant can infect one-and-a-half to two people. After 10 cycles of transmission — in which one person would infect two; those two people would infect four; those four people would infect eight, and so on — 2,047 people would be infected.

If 10 percent of them were sick enough to be hospitalized, that would lead to about 200 hospitalizations.

With a more contagious variant, like Omicron, the total number of infected people becomes huge, Bassett said. If each person infected four people, after 10 cycles, nearly 1.4 million people would be infected.

Many Omicron cases have been breakthrough infections — that is, infections of people who were vaccinated.

Even if only 1 percent — rather than 10 percent — were sick enough to be hospitalized, that means close to 14,000 people would be hospitalized.

Bassett displayed a graph showing infection rates in Norway and Denmark: Once Omicron appeared, the graph lines went nearly straight up.

Bassett described the two Scandinavian countries as being “highly vaccinated,” and as having populations with an age distribution more like the United States than South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first reported.

Over 86 percent of Norwegians are vaccinated against COVID-19 yet the country is currently experiencing the highest level of infection and of coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.

Over 90 percent of Denmark residents are vaccinated yet Norway is now at its peak for infections.

About 23 percent of South Africans are vaccinated, where infections are now at their peak.

About 72 percent of the United States population has received at least one dose of vaccine.

Even if Omicron is much less likely to cause severe disease, which seems to be the case, Bassett said, “if you have a lot of people infected, even a small proportion will lead to big numbers” of hospitalizations.

“We also can’t forget that with winter comes seasonal influenza,” said Bassett.

She displayed a graph showing hardly any flu cases last year, when people were isolated.

“But this year we’re already ahead of where we were in the last big flu season two years ago,” said Bassett. “So we’re concerned also about flu and the fact that we have both of these in our midst.”

Reiterating Bassett’s message, Hochul said that people are underestimating the power of Omicron: “You may only have 1 percent of people infected hospitalized versus 10 percent from Delta, but if you have a million more people infected because it’s spread so much more quickly, that means you’ll have overflowing hospitals at this rate,” said Hochul.

“Yesterday,” Hochul said at Monday’s press conference, “we broke another record with 23,391 cases.” The number of new cases in New York State had gone from about 6,000 last Sunday to 23,000 this Monday.

The encouraging news from other nations who have experienced the Omicron variant earlier, said Hochul, is the numbers have shot up quickly and then dropped quickly. Also, the Omicron variant appears to produce sickness that is not as severe.

On Sunday, the governor’s office, in its daily release, reported 192 confirmed cases of Omicron statewide.

On Monday, the governor’s office changed its method of reporting Omicron cases, no longer listing each case by county.

“Given the rate of spread of Omicron,” the release said, “it is more meaningful to now report the percentage of Omicron variants as reported to the public COVID-19 sequence databases, than continue to report counts of individual cases. This percentage can then be related to the total positive COVID case count in the state. This process is consistent with how the New York State Department of Health has reported on all other variants online: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-variant-data.

Data Tuesday morning in the GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data) database, the largest repository of coronavirus sequences in the world, the governor’s release said, show the Omicron variant comprised 36.6 percent of uploaded sequences from New York State between Dec. 7 and 20. This is a significant increase from the result announced Monday when the Omicron variant comprised 11 percent of uploaded sequences from New York State between Dec. 5 and 18.

 

Booster shots

“This is not March 2020,” said Hochul at Monday’s press conference, emphasizing, as Biden did on Tuesday, that there are now tools to deal with COVID-19.

Hochul stressed that New Yorkers should get vaccinated and boosted as well as wearing masks indoors.

She noted that soon 95 percent of New Yorkers 18 or older will have received at least one dose.

For New Yorkers who received first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, 3.4 million texts have been sent out to remind them to get a second shot. Also, 3.4 million robo calls have gone out, Hochul said.

Right now, she reported, 40 percent of New Yorkers who are eligible for a booster have gotten one. People who received Pfizer or Moderna have to wait six months to get a booster, while people who initially got the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine have to wait two months .

“We have to just meet this moment with action and not fear,” said Hochul.

In dealing with the Omicron variant, booster shots are particularly important.

Donald Trump this week stated publicly for the first time that he has received a booster shot.

Hochul, at her Monday press conference, said she had lost members of her extended family who refused to get vaccinated on principle of their personal liberties and freedoms.

“People have a right to stay alive and people that you affect have a right to live as well,” said Hochul. “And that’s something we should all remember.”

Albany County residents can receive free Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines — including booster shots — Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., each week at the Albany County Department of Health at 175 Green St. in Albany.

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

 

Jobs up in NYS

The state’s labor department released figures last Thursday showing private-sector jobs increased over the month by 24,200, or 0.3 percent, to 7,614,800 in November 2021.

By comparison, the number of private sector jobs in the United States increased by 0.2 percent.

Over the year, New York State’s private-sector jobs (not seasonally adjusted) increased by 315,100, or 4.3 percent.

The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area in that time period saw an increase of 8,100 jobs or 1.8 percent.

By comparison, the number of private sector jobs in the U.S. increased by 4.6 percent over the year.

 New York State’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased from 6.9 percent to 6.6 percent in November 2021.

During the year, the segment with the biggest increase in jobs was leisure and hospitality with 118,700 more jobs, an increase of 19.4 percent.

 

Medicaid enrollment spikes

Spurred by the pandemic, a record number of New Yorkers relied on Medicaid for health care in 2021, according to a new report from Thomas DiNapoli, the state’s comptroller.

Monthly enrollment exceeded 7 million for the first time, the report says. While enrollment has grown by about 5 percent per year over the last 15 years, increasing from about one in seven New Yorkers in 1998 to one in three in 2021, state budget projections rely on expectations for significant enrollment declines that may not materialize, the report says.

“A combination of federal and state Medicaid policy changes enacted over the past decade has contributed to a steep decline in the number of New Yorkers without health care coverage — from 2.2 million, or 11.4 percent, in 2008 to 1.0 million, or 5.2 percent, in 2019.

At the same time, DiNapoli writes, Medicaid is the second largest category of State spending, estimated at $27.8 billion.

“As a result of the economic instability caused by the pandemic,” he said, “monthly Medicaid enrollment swelled to more than 7 million people in February 2021.”

 

Food help

Hochul announced on Tuesday that all New Yorkers enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, called SNAP, will receive the maximum allowable level of food benefits for December.

All households participating in SNAP — including those already at the maximum level of benefits — will receive a supplemental allotment later this month, bringing in about $230 million in federal funding and more than $2.4 billion since January. 

“As we continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, too many New Yorkers are struggling to put food on the table,” said Hochul in a statement, making the announcement.

The emergency assistance supplement is provided to households that do not ordinarily receive the maximum allowable benefit per month on SNAP. Those households already near or at the maximum benefit level will receive a supplemental payment of at least $95.

As of October 2021, there were nearly 1.6 million households receiving SNAP throughout the state, totaling more than 2.77 million New Yorkers.

Also on Tuesday, Hochul announced New York State’s Restaurant Resiliency Program will be delivering 200,000 meals to New Yorkers in need through the end of the holiday season.

Through the program, the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets has received several hundred applications from restaurants to date, more than one third of which have come from minority- and woman-owned businesses. Of those, 215 restaurants have been approved including 34 restaurants that are preparing Kosher and Halal meals. Additionally, restaurants have been approved in the regions of each of New York's 10 food banks, illustrating the statewide reach of the program.

 

Regents exams canceled

January 2022 Regents exams have been cancelled, the state’s education commissioner, Betty Rosa, announced on Tuesday.

No decisions have been made about the exams typically given in June and August.

“New York set a daunting record last week with more COVID-19 cases reported in one day than ever before,” Rosa said in a statement, making the announcement. “Once again, the January Regents Exams cannot be safely, equitably, and fairly administered across the state.

“We will continue to work with our schools, districts, and stakeholders to ensure they have what they need to provide academic, social and emotional, and mental health supports for our students.”

So that students are not adversely impacted by the cancellation of the exams, the education department will ask the Board of Regents to adopt emergency regulations regarding the assessment requirements students must ordinarily meet to earn a high school diploma.

New York State United Teachers, a union with about 600,000 members, immediately issued a statement commending the cancellation.

“Given the unevenness of this school year with the pandemic still ongoing and the acute social-emotional needs of our students, canceling the January Regents exams is the right choice,” NYSUT said. “We thank Commissioner Rosa, Chancellor Young and the Board of Regents for recognizing that our educators are still assessing their students, preparing them to receive their diplomas and setting them up for success after graduation without this round of state exams.”

 

Albany County

This week, Albany County’s 93rd of battling the coronavirus, 10 residents succumbed to the disease: two women in their fifties, four women in their sixties and two men in their sixties, a man in his seventies, and a woman in her eighties.

This brings Albany County’s COVID-19 death toll to 467.

McCoy reported 299 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday morning in his daily release on the virus.

“The last time we had a single-day increase of new COVID infections this high was back on January 12 when we reported 351 new positive cases, which was the highest increase we had ever recorded since the start of the pandemic,” said McCoy in the release.

“This virus,” he said, “continues to spread at an alarming rate, and it continues to take the lives of our residents – two more since yesterday. It’s still unclear how these infections will impact our hospital system and we need to take more precautions to protect our community.”

The county’s seven-day average of new daily positive cases is now up to 223.8. Albany County’s most recent seven-day average of cases per 100,000 is now up to 59.1 and the Capital Region’s average of cases per 100,000 is now up to 64.0.

There are now 1,048 active cases in Albany County, up from 906 on Tuesday. The number of county residents under quarantine jumped up to 1,978 from 1,701. 

There were eight new hospitalizations since Tuesday, and there are 61 county residents currently hospitalized with the coronavirus – a net decrease of two. Eight of those hospital patients are now in intensive-care units, up from seven on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, 78.5 percent of all Albany County residents have received at least the first dose of the vaccine, and 71.2 percent have been fully vaccinated. The first-dose vaccination rate for county residents 18 and older is now 87.6 percent.