Governor Andrew Cuomo said of the newly allocated $15 million, “Only about 6.7 percent of the state has new positive cases above the average and the vaccination rate below the state average. So we’re focusing on those 117 ZIP codes.”

Enterprise editor Melissa Hale-Spencer won the Golden Quill award from the International Society of Weekly Newspaper editors for her Feb.

The Capital Region, of which Albany County is a part, has the highest COVID-19 infection rate of any of the state’s 10 regions.

 Wildfires in the United States and Canada have led the state’s commissioners of health and environmental conservation to issue an air quality health advisory that runs from 10 a.m. until midnight on Tuesday across New York State.

While the single Albany County death this week from COVID-19 was a sobering reminder that, still, the virus is fatal, most of the numbers — statewide and at the county level — have been encouraging.

The emergency was declared on March 7, 2020 to fight COVID-19 and had come under fire in recent months, particularly from Republicans, as an abuse of power by the governor. The announcement ended a week, statewide and in Albany County, in which infection rates and hospitalizations remained low and vaccination rates inched upward. The week before, Cuomo announced the statewide lifting of most COVID-19 restrictions.

“The nature of rare plants is that you almost never find them. To have discovered a state endangered species that hasn’t been seen in 100 years — it’s just amazing,” says Jesse Hoffman who discovered two Virginia marbleseed plants in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.

Local sales tax collections, which had dipped precipitously a year ago as the result of restrictions to contain the pandemic, in May increased by 57.8 percent over last May, the highest one-month increase in recent history, the state’s comptroller announced.

While statewide, New York reached the 70-percent mark of adults with at least one dose of vaccine, lifting restrictions, vaccination rates vary across the state. On Friday, the state’s vaccine tracker started listing the rates according to ZIP code.

In Albany County, the lowest rate of residents who have received one dose is 1222 in Albany at 7.7 percent and the highest is 12007 in Alcove at 100 percent.

The Guilderland Planning Board recently heard Borrego Solar Systems propose a five-megawatt ground-mounted solar facility at 2825 Curry Road, a well-screened-from-the-road 48-acre parcel located in a largely commercial area.