ALBANY COUNTY — The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 in Albany County continues to rise, reaching 621 on Saturday morning. The death toll remains at 20.

“Testing takes time,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy at his Saturday press briefing. 

He said that he and the county’s health commissioner, Elizabeth Whalen, knew the numbers would creep up once community testing resumed on April 6 after a two-week hiatus.

Whalen had said on Friday that, with the president and governor talking about reopening the economy, “There’s a lot of restlessness.” She indicated that, just because New York City may have plateaued, that isn’t true of Albany County.

“In Albany County, we continue to see a rise of cases,” she said. “Our hospitals are seeing an uptick in cases and all that has to be monitored carefully. We are not in any way, shape, or form in a downward trend at this point.”

She urged residents to stay home; continually wash their hands and; when it’s essential to go out, to wear masks.

“What we do will determine what the curve looks like in coming weeks,” said Whalen. While she acknowledged that it becomes increasingly frustrating to follow protocols as the time for social isolation has lengthened, Whalen concluded, “Right now, we are still in that mitigation phase.”

In addition to the state’s testing site at the University at Albany’s uptown campus, the county this week opened four sites in neighborhoods where residents can walk up, rather than drive, to the test sites. In the first few days, 110 people have been tested at those sites, McCoy said on Saturday.

 Testing is available at Whitney M. Young, Jr. Health Center at 920 Lark Drive in Albany, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Weekly schedules for the three other mobile testing sites are posted on the Albany County website.

All testing is done by appointment only after the caller is screened for symptoms over the phone by calling the Whitney Young, Jr. Health Center at 518-465-4771.

McCoy said it can take four to six days to get test results back.

He also announced that 747 county residents are currently under mandatory quarantine with another  51 under precautionary quarantine.

Altogether in Albany County, 1,508 people have come out of quarantine, and 312 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 have recovered, McCoy said. The county has about 320,000 residents.

McCoy also announced that 35 county residents are currently hospitalized with seven in intensive-care units. The hospitalization rate of those who tested positive stands at 5.6 percent.

“A lot of healthy people want to get tested,” said McCy. “We can’t test you. We have to test people that have signs and symptoms.”

The typical symptoms of COVID-19 are a fever, cough, and shortness of breath.

Gov calls for feds to coordinate testing

Also on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed 7,090 additional coronavirus cases, bringing the statewide total to 236,732.

“Hospitalization numbers are down — good news. We had been hovering around 18,000, then we went to 17,000, and we’re now at 16,000,” Cuomo said in his Saturday press briefing. The number of deaths has come down, too; 540 New Yorkers died of COVID-19 on Friday, Cuomo said.

Still, he said, there were about 2,000 new admissions Friday to New York State hospitals.

Cuomo said the virus now is “basically stable” in New York. “Where we were, was one person was infecting 1.4 people and that’s when you have outbreak, widespread epidemic. We brought it down from 1.4 to .9. How did you do that? Those were the New York Pause policies,” he said.

Cuomo focused primarily on the need for federal coordination of a supply chain to bring testing to scale so states can begin reopening functions. Tests are currently produced by private laboratory-equipment manufacturers — there are 30 large manufacturers in the United States, he said, and these manufacturers sell the tests to smaller labs, who then sell the tests to hospitals and the public.

For a test to be performed, local labs must have the necessary reagents and there are different reagents for different manufacturer’s tests. The state asked the top 50 labs in New York what they needed to double their testing output, and all said they needed more reagents, Cuomo reported.

“That’s the logjam that we are in,” said Cuomo: Local labs have the test but they need the reagents to do a higher volume of tests.

He went on, “When you go back to the manufacturer and say: Why don’t you distribute more reagents? They say one of two things. I can’t get more reagents because they come from China, they come from here, they come from here. We don’t make them in the United States. Or they say the federal government is telling me who to distribute to.”

Finally, on Saturday, Cuomo said he would issue an executive order allowing New Yorkers to get a marriage license remotely and allowing clerks to perform wedding ceremonies through video conferences, a practice that is banned under current law.