Residents and staff at nursing homes now must be tested twice a week for COVID-19, and patients with the disease can no longer be housed at nursing homes but will, instead, stay in hospitals.

GUILDERLAND — A new program, Checking on Our Neighbors, is connecting isolated seniors in Rensselaer County with volunteers who provide ongoing check-ins and assurance phone calls to combat loneliness.

Every day for 60 days since the coronavirus outbreak, the Altamont neighbors who live on Euclid Avenue have taken two minutes to say hello to each other.

No inmates at the Albany County jail have contracted COVID-19, said Sheriff Craig Apple. New arrivals are quarantined for 14 days, Apple said, and all of the inmates and staff have masks.

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy said that the eight counties in the Capital Region — Albany, Columbia, Greene, Saratoga, Schenectady, Rensselaer, Warren, and Washington — now meet five out of the seven metrics outlined by Governor Andrew Cuomo for reopening.

More than half of Albany County’s jobs fall in the second phase, outlined by the governor for reopening businesses, which would mean June at the earliest.

As the new cases of COVID-19 have dropped statewide, Albany County is still waiting to hit its apex.

“If you can open your heart and open your home, we would love to have you foster a child,” said Moira Manning, Albany County’s commissioner for the Department for Children, Youth and Families, giving this phone number to start the process: 518-447-7515.

“We received word overnight,” said Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen at Friday’s press briefing of expanded testing at the University at Albany. “They’re looking to cast a much broader net of people that need to be screened or tested for COVID-19.”

Prosecutors and defense attorneys along with judges no longer gather in a courtroom for an arraignment but rather each works from his or her own home or office, connecting through Skype.