GUILDERLAND — A buoyant stream of graduates flowed out of the county’s convention center into bright sunlight Friday afternoon — the young women in robes of white, the young men in robes of red.

SLINGERLANDS — On Friday morning, following two similar incidents in May, a truck traveling west on New Scotland Road got stuck under the rail-trail bridge.

The emergency was declared on March 7, 2020 to fight COVID-19 and had come under fire in recent months, particularly from Republicans, as an abuse of power by the governor. The announcement ended a week, statewide and in Albany County, in which infection rates and hospitalizations remained low and vaccination rates inched upward. The week before, Cuomo announced the statewide lifting of most COVID-19 restrictions.

Guilderland Democrats sent a mixed message Tuesday in the town’s first primary — a four-way race for two spots where the key issue was development.

“The nature of rare plants is that you almost never find them. To have discovered a state endangered species that hasn’t been seen in 100 years — it’s just amazing,” says Jesse Hoffman who discovered two Virginia marbleseed plants in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.

Local sales tax collections, which had dipped precipitously a year ago as the result of restrictions to contain the pandemic, in May increased by 57.8 percent over last May, the highest one-month increase in recent history, the state’s comptroller announced.

Joy Bennett says she felt like she was home when she discovered folk music. “The sharing of music touches part of you maybe you didn’t know existed,” Bennett says in this week’s podcast.

While statewide, New York reached the 70-percent mark of adults with at least one dose of vaccine, lifting restrictions, vaccination rates vary across the state. On Friday, the state’s vaccine tracker started listing the rates according to ZIP code.

In Albany County, the lowest rate of residents who have received one dose is 1222 in Albany at 7.7 percent and the highest is 12007 in Alcove at 100 percent.

Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen warned, “I don’t think we’ve crossed the finish line yet …. I do not believe at this point herd immunity has been achieved and I think that this is something we can continue to work towards.”

“From the moment this vaccine was available, our members and staff worked very hard to get it to where it was needed the most. It was through their efforts, and those of our County Executive, our Department of Health and our amazing Medical Reserve Corps that we are able to celebrate this milestone today,” said Andrew Joyce, chairman of the Albany County Legislature. According to the state’s vaccine tracker, as of Tuesday evening, 74.5 percent of Albany County’s residents aged 18 and older had received at least one dose of vaccine.