“It won’t stop all incidents,” said Matthew Pinchinat, Guilderland’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “But it will show we do take them seriously.”

A violation of the state requirement for everyone to wear masks indoors when in public “is subject to all civil and criminal penalties, including a maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation,” according to the governor’s office. Local health departments are being asked to enforce these requirements. 

Starting on Thursday, Dec. 9, hospitals statewide with 10 percent or fewer unstaffed beds available had to cease non-essential elective procedures. Their capacity will be reevaluated in mid-January. “We want to be flexible,” said Governor Kathy Hochul.

On Tuesday, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy issued a joint public-health advisory with Schenectady County Manager Rory Fluman recommending all residents wear masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status, and recommending businesses require employees and customers to wear masks as well.

The biggest factor in the revenue jump is the state’s commitment to make Foundation Aid to schools whole. That brought Guilderland an additional $1.5 million this year and will bring in $2.5 million next year.

The most important change in preparing for an active shooter is that faculty now has options. Formerly, the only choice was to go into lockdown. Now teachers can choose something different, like having students leave the school, which Guilderland High School Principal Michael Piscitelli said was “super powerful.”

For the first time, two of the new cases are upstate — from Oneida County, near the center of New York.

 New York State’s total of the highly contagious new Omicron variant, thus far, is eight: Seven cases from New York City and one from Suffolk County on Long Island.

Dave A. Chokshi, the New York City’s health commissioner, said of the Omicron variant in New York State, “There is community spread.” The cases, he said, are not just from people traveling to Africa, where the Omicron variant was first reported, or to other locations where it has been identified.

 Only 16 percent of adult New Yorkers have gotten booster shots. Of New Yorkers age 65 and older, 37 percent have received booster shots. The shots are needed because COVID-19 vaccines lose effectiveness over time.