ALBANY COUNTY — In the midst of his press conference on Tuesday morning, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy got a text saying that two more COVID-19 patients had been hospitalized: both are men, aged 44 and 68.

“Take this serious, folks. Please,” he said.

“The work of cemeteries is considered an essential business,” said funeral director John Gulino. “The graves will be dug; people will be buried. It’s not going to get like Italy.”

Someone at the City Mission has contracted the coronavirus disease. The county’s health department is working with support from the county’s Department of Social Services to see that people who are homeless or in shelters can be quarantined and not put others at risk. And the sheriff is ready to open a homeless shelter in a wing of the county’s jail.

Gun sales have skyrocketed, Albany Sheriff Craig Apple says, urging, “Don’t go out and shoot a gun for the first time in the midst of this crisis.”

NYS gears up to create hospital space, manufacture masks and medical equipment

The combination of not enough tests, people still being out, and the COVID-19 being community acquired is “very concerning,” said Elizabeth Whalen, Albany County’s health commissioner.

Albany Medical Center and St. Peter’s Health Partners are suspending COVID-19 community testing, the hospitals announced on Thursday evening.

Effective immediately, St. Peter’s will be testing only symptomatic health-care providers at its Albany Memorial Campus at 600 Northern Blvd. in Albany.

Some of the towns with land on the Helderberg escarpment where large wind turbines were proposed in 2008 drafted laws on wind energy; others haven’t.

Local schools, though closed, are continuing to provide sustenance to students — food and social services for those who need it as well as remote teaching.

The president of Albany Medical Center, Dennis McKenna, estimates Albany Med has two to three days left of testing kits for COVID-19. “We are dependent on availability of tests,” he said. “If kits are in short supply, they will be kept for patients in-house or the population most at risk.”