ALBANY COUNTY — Two more deaths from COVID-19 were reported at Friday’s county press briefing, bringing Albany County’s death count from coronavirus to four.

Both of the patients were men in their 60s. All of the deaths have been of people older than 60 — a woman in her 70s and another man in his 60s — and all of them have had underlying health conditions, according to Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy.

As of Friday morning, the county has 254 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 412 people under mandatory quarantine and 123 people under precautionary quarantine. Thirty COVID-19 patients are currently hospitalized in Albany County, half of them in intensive-care units; the county’s hospitalization rate stands at just over 11.8 percent.

Also on Friday morning, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state will open a new COVID-19 mobile testing site for the Capital District in partnership with Albany Medical Center, St. Peter’s Health Partners, and the University at Albany.

The mobile testing center will be set up in a parking lot at the UAlbany campus at 1400 Washington Ave. in the Colonial Quad parking lot, accessible from the university’s main entrance off of Washington Avenue.

The site will prioritize tests for people with the highest risk. Residents who want to be tested must make an appointment by calling 888-364-3065. No walk-ins are allowed and all patients must be in a vehicle.

The UAlbany testing center is slated to open on Monday, April 6, at 10 a.m. and will run Monday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Drive-through testing facilities keep people who are sick or at risk of having contracted the coronavirus out of health-care facilities where they could infect other people, the governor explained, adding that New York is currently testing more than 16,000 people per day, more than any other state and more than China and South Korea on a per-capita basis.

McCoy and Elizabeth Whalen, Albany County’s health commissioner, have been calling for community testing since it shut down two weeks ago due to limited test kits from the federal government. Cuomo had announced on April 1 that Regeneron Pharmaceuticals was creating 500,000 test kits for New York State for free.

At his Friday morning press conference, Cuomo also said he would sign an executive order that allows the state to redistribute ventilators and personal protective equipment, like masks and gowns, taking them from institutions that currently don’t need them and having the National Guard transport them to hospitals with the highest need. The equipment will be returned to the hospitals or the hospitals will be reimbursed, Cuomo said.

Cuomo said on Friday that the statewide total for confirmed cases is now 102,863. New York City remains the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States and Cuomo said that the Javits Center in Manhattan, which had been converted for overflow patients, will now be used for COVID-19 patients, adding 2,500 beds.

 “As it turned out, we don’t have non-COVID people to any great extent in the hospitals,” the governor said, noting that, with people staying home, there are fewer car crashes, and a reduced crime rate. “Hospitals have turned into effectively ICU hospitals for COVID patients,” he said.

“In the ICU, you need a ventilator,” Cuomo said. “And if you don’t have a ventilator, the process stops, and we don't have enough ventilators ... I don’t believe the federal stockpile has enough to help all of the states because you can’t buy the material at this point.”

Cuomo went on, “I’m not going to be in a position where people are dying and we have several hundred ventilators in our own state somewhere else.” He said to the hospitals that will be having their ventilators transported downstate, “I will give you my personal word, I’ll pay you for the ventilator. I’m not going to let people die because we didn’t redistribute ventilators.”

The governor concluded, “We’re learning things that fortunately no other community had to learn because we’re first and because of the intensity of the situation here. When our urgent need is over we will help any community in this nation that needs it, because that outpouring has been there for us.”

On Thursday afternoon, at a press conference held at Albany Medical Center by area hospitals, Dennis McKenna, M.D. who became president and chief executive officer of Albany Med on April 1, announced that Albany Med began accepting transfer patients late Tuesday night from hospitals in Flushing and Jamaica, Queens and has accepted 20 transfer patients so far. Combined, Capital Region hospitals have accepted 38 transferred patients.

Albany Med accepts nearly 16,000 transfer patients each year, more than 40 patients a day, it was noted, since it is the only level-one trauma center, tertiary care center, and academic medical center in northeastern New York and western New England.

“Accepting transfer patients will not hinder our ability to care for patients in our region,” said Fred Venditti, M.D., executive vice president for system care delivery and Albany Med’s hospital general director. He explained how analytic models are being used to project volume, and how staff, space, and supplies are regularly examined.

Albany County’s first two cases of COVID-19 were announced on March 12. Since the outbreak began, 50 out of 10,000 Albany Med employees have tested positive for COVID-19, it was announced; many have returned to work, and none have been hospitalized.

Venditti said that Albany Med has adequate personal protective equipment, known as PPE, for staff to safely care for patients. To conserve equipment, Albany Med recently began using ultraviolet light to disinfect N95 masks for safe reuse.

The hospital has used Tru-D, or total room ultraviolet disinfection technology, to effectively disinfect room surfaces for many years, he said, explaining that UV radiation distorts the genetic material of airborne viruses, thereby killing the virus.

David Liebers, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and Ellis Medicine’s vice president and chief medical officer, warned that the greatest challenges are ahead.