ALBANY COUNTY — When and how to reopen in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic have been central points of debate and discussion on the national, state, and county levels this week.

On Friday, May 1, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that all schools and colleges in New York will remain closed for the rest of the academic year and will continue to provide distance learning.

“You have 700 public school districts, 4,800 schools in this state, and then you have 1,800 private schools, 89 SUNY and CUNY campuses, and 100 private campuses for a total of 4.2 million students,” Cuomo said at his press briefing on Friday. “So, the decisions on the education system are obviously critically important. We must protect our children.”

The decision was widely applauded by teachers’ unions, school boards, and state education leaders.

Cuomo’s announcement on Tuesday that the state will work with the Gates Foundation to develop a blueprint “to reimagine education in the new normal” was not so universally applauded by educators who argued remote learning cannot replace personal connection in a classroom.

Also on Friday, protesters again converged on the state capitol, demanding an end to the shutdown, which Cuomo has extended to May 15 for non-essential businesses.

A Siena Poll released on March 30 showed that 87 percent of New Yorkers approved of Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic while 41 percent approved of President Donald Trump’s handling.

The White House has left most of the decisions on when and how to reopen up to individual states.

On Monday, as deaths nationwide from the coronavirus disease topped 70,000, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that, by August, the death toll could double and that, as businesses reopen, infection rates could spike.

Cuomo put it pointedly in his press briefing on Tuesday: “The fundamental question which we’re not articulating is: How much is a human life worth?”

Cuomo went on to say the model that the White House uses to project COVID-19 deaths went from 60,000 deaths to 134,000 deaths.

“When the director of the institute was asked why those revisions happened, the director said rising mobility in most U.S. states as well as the easing of social distancing measures expected in 31 states by May 11th, indicating that growing contacts among people will promote transmission of the coronavirus,” Cuomo reported. 

Also on Tuesday, the White House said it planned to phase out its coronavirus task force to focus on restarting the economy.

In New York State, none of the 10 regions Cuomo has defined has been able to meet all seven requirements for reopening. 

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy stressed at his press briefing on Tuesday that a regional approach has to be followed. He named other counties in the Capital Region with which he is working. He said he believes six of the seven metrics can be met. “I’m confident we can open in a timely manner,” McCoy said, after Cuomo’s “pause” ends on May 15.

The seventh requirement is to have at least 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents. “The last one, no one can meet,” said McCoy.

Albany County has about 306,000 residents and so would need at least 90 tracers. The county’s health commissioner, Elizabeth Whalen, said last week that the county currently has about 30 trackers, mostly health-department employees, and that the department has done contact tracing for more than 20 years for a variety of diseases including pertussis, mumps, measles, and sexually-transmitted diseases.

Albany County continues with diagnostic testing for COVID-19 in a manner that McCoy frequently terms “aggressive.” In addition to the state’s drive-through site that opened in mid-April at the uptown University at Albany campus, the county has also announced testing at a Rite Aid pharmacy in Colonie and at an urgent-care center in Guilderland.

Additionally, Albany County is working with the Whitney M. Young Jr. Health Center in setting up mobile walk-in sites for at-risk neighborhoods, first in Albany and Watervliet, and then in Cohoes and now also in Troy.

The county updates its data dashboard with test results daily.

Whalen noted on Monday that, following a nationwide trend, there are racial disparities with communities of color bearing a disproportionate amount of the disease.

She also noted that deaths fall disproportionately on older residents with those aged 50 to 74 making up 46.8 percent of deaths and those 75 and older making up 53.2 percent of deaths.

On Wednesday, McCoy noted two more deaths from COVID-19, bringing the county’s death toll to 53. The two women who died on Tuesday were elderly — one was in her seventies and the other in her eighties — and, like the vast majority of deaths from COVID-19, each had underlying health issues.

One of the women who died on Tuesday was a resident of Shaker Place, the county’s nursing home. As of Wednesday, 48 residents at Shaker Place have tested positive for COVID-19, including two who have recovered. Also, 15 employees who have tested positive remain out of work, while nine others who had tested positive have fully recovered and returned to work. Altogether, seven Shaker Place residents have died of the disease.

“We continue to see cases in the nursing homes,” Whalen said on Wednesday, noting that the county works with the state’s health department on such cases. “We’ve trained an eye since day one,” said Whalen. “We need to look at additional strategies that we can employ.”

As of Wednesday, Albany County has1,252 confirmed cases of COVID-19, up 16 from Tuesday.

“Are we going to hit the apex?” asked McCoy on Wednesday. He noted that, over the last five days, the average number of new positive tests in Albany County was 20.2. He said there will be a spike when results from the Teresian House Center for the Elderly, where testing was handled by a private agency, are reported to the county.

Currently, 1,093 Albany County residents are under mandatory quarantine and eight are under precautionary quarantine. So far, 2,862 county residents have completed quarantine, with 664 of them having tested positive and recovered. 

Thirty-two county residents are hospitalized with eight of them in intensive-care units. The hospitalization rate for Albany County stands at 2.55 percent.

On Wednesday, Cuomo reported on the results of data collected from 113 hospitals statewide over three days, which found that the majority of people hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 were not working or traveling; further, they were predominately downstate, minorities or elderly, non-essential employees, and had been staying home.

The state has also done testing for antibodies and on Saturday Cuomo reported that the survey showed 12.3 percent of New Yorkers have COVID-19 antibodies.

“If somebody has antibodies, it means that that person was infected,” said Cuomo.

The survey developed a baseline infection rate by testing 15,000 people at grocery stores and community centers across the state over the past two weeks. 

The highest percentage was in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic, where 19.9 percent tested positive for antibodies to COVID-19; other downstate counties were in the double digits. In the Capital Region, 2.2 percent tested positive. The lowest percentage was in the North Country, at 1.2 percent.

On Monday, Whalen discussed herd immunity and said it can prevent spread of a virus. But figuring out how many people need to have immunity — antibodies in their system from having been infected — so that it is safe to be back in society is “very problematic.”

With COVID-19, Whalen said, “We do not know that having a disease and having antibodies confers immunity and, if so, how long does it confer immunity. The best way to confer immunity is when you have a vaccine available. She noted that a vaccine won’t be available for at least another year. She believes a phased approach is best to “inch back into life as we know it.”

Then, she said, the data must be followed closely. “If we see rates of disease and death go up … we may need to go back” to more constraints.

“There will not be opening up without mitigation strategies,” said Whalen on Wednesday, again stressing the need for frequent handwashing, keeping six feet from people, and wearing a mask when that’s not possible.

McCoy concluded, in updating his plan to submit to the governor’s office, that his priority, first and foremost, is to protect the health and safety of residents.

He said he hopes to have the report posted by Monday and urged, “Please stay patient.”