The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area lost 26,500 private-sector jobs, a loss of 7.3 percent, from January 2020 to January 2021.

The American Rescue Plan’s funding can be used to respond to the public health emergency caused by the coronavirus as well as to address the economic fallout that came with it, including assistance to households, small businesses and not-for-profits, and aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel and hospitality.

Starting on Wednesday, March 17, vaccine eligibility will expand to public-facing government and public employees, not-for-profit workers who provide public-facing services to needy New Yorkers, and essential in-person public-facing building service workers; also, all providers, except pharmacies, can vaccinate anyone who is eligible to receive the vaccine.

“This is the first time the federal government has provided direct unrestricted aid to the counties and the local governments of the United States. It’s unprecedented,” said Stephen Acquario, executive director of the New York State Association of Counties.

Restaurants outside of New York City can move to 75-percent capacity on March 19, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Sunday.

“In a time when so much of our politics is bitterly divided, county leaders from both ends of the political spectrum advocated for this package because it will help them help their communities recover from this pandemic,” said Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro, a Republican, who is president of the New York State Association of Counties.

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said that 20.5 percent of the county’s population has gotten at least a first shot of COVID-19 vaccine, the second highest rate in the Capital Region and one of the highest rates in the state.

New York State is setting up new sites solely to administer the recently-approved single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which is just as effective in preventing hospitalization and death as the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, according to clinical trials, although not as effective in preventing mild cases of the virus.

Albany County’s executive, Daniel McCoy, said on Wednesday he had scored so many doses of COVID-19 vaccine from the state that he was sharing them with neighboring Rensselaer and Schenectady counties.

Nursing homes in the United States have seen the lowest number of new COVID-19 cases since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services started tracking cases in May 2020, suggesting that the vaccines are working.