Volunteers are being asked to help out at schools that are laying off staff because of drastic, last-minute, pandemic-induced budget cuts. “We need volunteer organizations now more than ever,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy on Friday. “We need parents to help out, teach.”

Chris VanPatten, whose family owned a Guilderland farmhouse for nearly a century, before selling it five years ago, was sad to see it burn on Friday.

“The president says he’s going to have a vaccine,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday. “CDC is talking about a vaccine in early November. How convenient. It’s going to be an Election Day miracle drug. Some people are concerned that the vaccine may wind up being hydroxychloroquine.”

And a Siena poll released on Wednesday found that, despite venues being open, majorities of New Yorkers are not comfortable dining indoors in restaurants or going to gyms, bowling alleys, or bars. More than half of New Yorkers, 51 percent, say the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come, and 86 percent are concerned that New York will face a large outbreak in the fall.

BETHLEHEM — At noon on Wednesday, Scott Dansey, a senior staff member for SABIC Innovative Plastics in Selkirk, told the press that, in a day and a half, the hazardous situation, where a chemical had escaped from a train car, had been brought under control.

“Whether you have signs or symptoms, please go out and get tested …,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy. “It’s the only way we’re going to track this. It’s the only way we’re going to know if the virus is still lingering out there … It didn’t go away.”

Tension between reopening and increased transmission of COVID-19 grows.

The state and the county continue to urge residents — even those without COVID-19 symptoms — to get tested for the disease despite new CDC guidelines that say otherwise.

On Friday, a statewide association for nursing homes wrote the governor to ask that New York’s requirements for nursing-home visitors and COVID-19 testing be recast to match federal rules released this week.

Cuomo and the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut — all Democrats — issued a joint statement on Thursday, saying, “This 180-degree reversal of COVID-19 testing guidelines is reckless, and not based on science and has the potential to do long-term damage to the institution’s reputation.”