ALBANY COUNTY — Three-hundred-and-nine Albany County residents have now tested positive for coronavirus disease 2019 and, according to the county’s executive, Daniel McCoy, 90 percent of the recently confirmed cases are of first responders.

He named firefighters, police, and emergency medical services workers, as well as those working in nursing homes and hospitals among them.

Until Monday, when community testing started again, the only people being tested for the disease were hospitalized patients and health-care workers who had been exposed. 

On Tuesday, at his daily press briefing, McCoy said that 459 people are now under mandatory quarantine — a jump of more than 100 from the day before — and 57 are under precautionary quarantine.

McCoy said the increase of mandatory quarantine numbers was because of “the contact people had in the different services.”

Peter Barber, Guilderland’s supervisor, wrote on Tuesday afternoon, in his daily email to residents, that two paramedics in the town’s EMS had tested positive for the disease.

“Both medics are asymptomatic and resting well at home under quarantine,” Barber wrote. He said that the town was guided by the county’s health department, which identified additional staff for testing. “Test results are forthcoming and all staff members are asymptomatic,” Barber said.

He thanked the EMS staff for its “dedicated service” and noted, “There has been no impact upon system status or the full deployment of ambulances and fly cars.”

McCoy was questioned again at his Tuesday morning press briefing on when the county would release information on which towns and populations have confirmed cases of COVID-19.

“We’re figuring that out,” McCoy responded, “and hopefully with more testing we’ll know.”

Although the county announced, on March 12, the location of the first two cases — a Guilderland woman and an Albany man — it has not since released locations, except to name the schools attended by two students who had tested positive: one at Farnsworth Middle School in Guilderland and the other at Pine Hills in Albany.

McCoy has repeatedly said the disease is widespread throughout the county. On Tuesday, he said, “It’s out everywhere in Albany County.”

This week, Commander Brian Wood, who heads the Office of Emergency Management for the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, told The Enterprise that, according to the county’s health department, there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the four Hilltowns or New Scotland — rural municipalities where social distancing really isn’t a problem. The majority of the confirmed cases, he said, are in the county’s densely populated cities: Albany, Cohoes, and Watervliet. (See related story.)

Governor Andrew Cuomo said in his press briefing on Monday that, although the state had its largest number of deaths, the rate of hospitalization is continuing to decrease. He stressed the importance of continuing social distancing.

On Tuesday, Cuomo confirmed 8,174 more cases of coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 138,863 — most of them downstate.

He also announced the state will invest in private companies to bring rapid COVID-19 testing to scale and accelerate testing capacity. The state’s health department, he said, has developed a test to detect antibodies to the COVID-19 infection in a person’s blood.  He called this test an important step toward determining whether New Yorkers are developing immunity and when they could potentially return to work or school.

The state testing that began at the University at Albany on Monday, staffed by Albany Medical Center and St. Peter’s Health Partners, is to determine if someone has COVID-19.

Elizabeth Whalen, Albany County’s health commissioner, said on Tuesday that hospitals in the county “have not had an issue with surge capacities as yet … It may be it just hasn’t hit us.”

McCoy reported on Tuesday that 39 people are now hospitalized in the county with 13 in intensive-care units. The hospitalization rate for Albany County stands at just over 12.6 percent of those who tested positive. Eight people in Albany County have died of COVID-19.

Whalen went on to say that every day her department hears from patients expressing symptoms; COVID-19 symptoms include fever and a cough. But, until Monday, those patients weren’t able to access testing.

Yesterday, 200 to 300 people were tested at the UAlbany site, Whalen said; McCoy said earlier that number could ramp up to 1,000 per day.

Whalen said results from those tests won’t be known for 24 to 48 hours.

So far, in Albany County, 7.5 percent of those who have been tested got positive results. Downstate, Whalen said, that number is 40 to 60 percent.

Whalen again stressed the regulations of standing six feet from others and, especially as the weather gets nicer, not gathering in groups.

“There will be ramifications,” she said.