Local school superintendents were taken aback last Thursday when the state’s health commissioner summarily announced his department would be providing no guidance for the opening of schools in the midst of a surge of COVID-19 cases.

The United States is now averaging over 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, which hasn’t happened since February, the CDC noted on Monday. The seven-day average of new cases has doubled in the last two weeks as has the death rate.

Albany County is nearing an infection rate of 5 percent as 80 new cases of COVID-19 were reported Saturday.

Guilderland is “strongly encouraging” face masks be worn indoors and Albany County, starting Monday, will require anyone in a county building to be masked — both regardless of vaccination status.

Albany County has at least $16 million to assist renters who are at risk of an eviction because of COVID-related hardships.

Tom Ellis, Albany

The structures we have inherited shape the way we live — as the close cluster of homes in New Salem shaped my family — and also remind us who we are and what we come from as a people.

On Sunday, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that Albany County has crossed over the line from “moderate” to “substantial” transmission of COVID-19, which triggers the new CDC guidance that even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in public. The state has issued no directives on whether this guidance must be followed, with the governor saying it is up to individual municipalities to decide. As of Wednesday, Albany County — still in the substantial transmission zone — had issued no directives.

During late summer, Asian longhorned beetles — an invasive species — emerge as adults and are active outside of their host tree.

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation wants to locate infestations of the beetles before they cause serious damage to the state’s forests and street trees.

Nine new vaccination sites will open, including one at the Empire State Plaza’s concourse in Albany. With the first wave of the pandemic, in March of 2020, Cuomo used a state of emergency to issue executive orders. Currently, with no state of emergency declared, he said,  “Local governments are now trying to figure out how to deal with the local guidance.”