ALBANY COUNTY — Starting on Thursday, the statewide mask-or-vax mandate for businesses is lifted, Governor Kathy Hochul announced at a press briefing on Wednesday.

Governor Kathy Hochul said on Friday she would talk to her health experts “and then make some decisions in the next few days, the next few weeks about the requirements that we have in place to keep us safe and whether or not they’re going to be as necessary.”

On Friday, Hochul announced the mask-or-vax requirement, initially set to expire on Feb. 1, would be extended until Feb. 10 and then re-evaluated in two-week increments. An appeal, now in New York’s middle-level court, has yet to be decided. On Monday, the court granted the health department’s request for a stay, which means the mask mandate can remain in effect through March 2.

The mask-or-vax mandate for indoor venues is being extended to Feb. 10, Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday.

It was originally set to expire on Feb. 1, although Hochul has repeatedly said she may extend it, depending on coronavirus metrics.

Over the last two years, nursing homes in the county — which are required to inform the state, but not the county, of deaths — have not always informed the county’s health department in a timely manner.

New York State has requested an additional $1.6 billion from the United States Treasury Department to help tenants and landlords who have applied for Emergency Rental Assistance.

Ryan Irwin, Guilderland

The Jan. 24 ruling by Justice Thomas Rademaker of the state Supreme Court in Nassau County said Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration had exceeded its authority in implementing the mask-mandate rule. 

Graphs on the county’s website show the surge this January, with the Omicron variant still making up 95 percent of the cases statewide, was about three times higher than the surge last January, but, at the same time, another graph shows hospitalizations with COVID-related cases were about three-quarters the number in January 2020. Hospitalization surges typically lag about a week behind infection surges so the county’s hospitalizations, while they may be leveling, have not yet plunged like the infection rate.

“I hope that our infection rate will continue to come down, but for now, we’re still identifying hundreds of cases of the virus every single day,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy as he announced 453 new COVID-19 cases on Friday morning.