Graduation ceremonies for schools, colleges, and universities, effective May 1, will be allowed, both indoors and out, as long as restrictions on capacity and admittance are followed, the governor announced on Monday.

The hope is that, with three-foot distancing, school buildings can accommodate more students. The Biden administration has been pushing to open elementary and middle schools by the end of the month.

“Albany County now has the highest first dose vaccination rate for any county in the Capital Region, and our full vaccination rate went up a full percentage point since yesterday, reaching just under 30 percent of the county’s population,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy.

On Saturday, the first high school vaccine clinic will be held, in Bethlehem, with Crestwood Pharmacy, said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy.

GUILDERLAND — Farnsworth Middle School in Guilderland is among 16 schools statewide that have been redesignated as a 2021 Essential Elements: Schools to Watch.

Tuesday marked the first day that any New Yorker 16 or older would be eligible for vaccination. 

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer announced from a grill in Amsterdam that restaurants across the state are eligible for their own federal pandemic relief through the American Rescue Plan.

The state’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, released an analysis showing “job losses from the pandemic and the ensuing economic shutdown were swift and deep: employment in New York declined by nearly 2 million jobs from February to April 2020.”

He reported on new data released by the state’s Department of Labor that shows less than half of the jobs lost during that time have been recovered, and employment is still more than 1 million jobs below its pre-pandemic levels.

In the United States, by mid-March, the variant B.1.1.7, first identified in the United Kingdom, which has spread throughout Europe, accounted for 27 percent of the COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is up from 1 percent at the start of February.

BETHLEHEM — Sixty-four acres of forestland has been donated to the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy by WestRock, the second largest American packaging company, based in Georgia.