While the news, statewide and locally, on controlling the spread of coronavirus continues to be good, the fiscal news — a report on state tax receipts shows a 10-percent decline —  continues to be bleak.

Sweeping voter reforms and an extension for protecting tenants were part of the governor’s pandemic response on Thursday.

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy cited statistics on two leading underlying health issues of New Yorkers who had died from COVID-19: 13,000 with hypertension and 9,000 with diabetes. Regular physical activity, McCoy said, could improve or prevent these conditions.

The fall flu season looms as schools plan to reopen while facing a drastic decline in state funds.

Two more states — Alaska and Delaware — meet the metrics to qualify for the travel advisory requiring people traveling from the listed states, all of which have significant community spread, to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival in New York.

Today, Governor Andrew Cuomo called his June 12 executive order — the New York State Police Reform and Reinvention Collaborative — ambitious, and urged addressing the crisis. “Very little has been done. Today I’m sending a letter to 500 jurisdictions in New York State that have a police department and the letter is explaining that it is imperative that we address this urgent crisis,” said Cuomo.

The Guilderland School board set tax rates and approved putting about $1.2 million into reserves.

One of the state’s new initiatives is a pilot program — including Albany — to detect the presence of COVID-19 in wastewater, which is designed to set up an early indicator system to forecast the virus spread in communities. “Believe it or not, you can find the presence of COVID-19 in wastewater,” said the governor during a conference call with the press on Friday.

The announcement that New York would reopen schools came against a backdrop in which a research team at the University of Florida isolated live virus from aerosols collected at a distance of seven to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with COVID-19, which is further than the six feet recommended in social-distancing guidelines. Although not yet vetted by peer review, the findings have raised concern about school reopenings.

The federal judge that dismissed a suit from Guilderland residents concluded that, at worst, the town allowed Pyramid to clear-cut part of its property and, she wrote, “While this certainly could be seen as vexatious given that the property was undergoing a SEQRA review, it is not the sort of conduct that shocks the conscience or is ‘truly brutal and offensive to human dignity.’”