ALBANY COUNTY — In its 28th week of dealing with COVID-19, Albany County continued to see a growing number of cases at the University of Albany, and the county executive released figures showing a drastic increase in food insecurity.

Nationwide, COVID-19 deaths passed the 200,000 mark on Tuesday. The autumn surge that many had feared appeared to be materializing as schools reopened and more activities took place indoors with colder weather.

Locally, Guilderland had its first two cases of COVID-19 at Altamont Elementary School on Friday, and Voorheesville had its first case at the middle school on Wednesday.

Statewide, the comptroller released a report showing decreases in tax receipts, and local and state officials as well as Congressman Paul Tonko continued to call for federal aid to state and local governments.

Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced an executive order extending the state’s moratorium on COVID-related commercial evictions and foreclosures an additional month, until Oct. 20.

This measure extends protections already in place for commercial tenants and mortgagors, including retail establishments and restaurants. The moratorium on residential and commercial evictions was first announced on March 20, then the commercial eviction and foreclosure moratorium was extended through Aug. 20 and later through Sept. 20 by executive order.

On Tuesday, Cuomo announced that New York had conducted 10 million COVID-19 diagnostic tests, and throughout the week the infection rate remained below 1 percent.

On Wednesday, he said that the federal Food and Drug Administration had granted emergency-use authorization for an individual saliva swab test to diagnose coronavirus disease 2019. Rather than having a swap inserted in a person’s nose, an individual can swab his or her own moth to provide a saliva sample.

The test, developed by SUNY Upstate Medical University and Quadrant Biosciences, had been used for surveillance testing of students across the SUNY campuses but now, Cuomo said, it will be available throughout the state and nation for use by clinical labs serving patients at doctors’ offices, urgent-care clinics, and hospitals.

Also this week, Cuomo announced that five states had been added to New York’s travel advisory: Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Wyoming. The advisory requires people who travel to New York from areas with significant community spread to quarantine for 14 days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released guidance for upcoming holidays, including Halloween and Thanksgiving. On Friday, the CDC reversed its controversial guidance on COVID-19 testing.

UAlbany spike

Each day this week, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy announced new cases of COVID-19; most of them were related to the University at Albany.

On Thursday, 18 of 25 were related to UAlbany; on Friday,  27 of 32; on Saturday, 15 of 22 were from UAlbany; on Sunday, 10 of 18; on Monday, 5 of 8; on Tuesday, 11 of 16; and on Wednesday, 12 of 16 were from UAlbany.

On Tuesday, MedRxiv, which distributes complete but unpublished medical manuscripts, released a study linking the reopening of colleges and universities with an increase nationwide in COVID-19 cases.

Only about a fifth of counties nationwide have college campuses and those counties with colleges that have reopened have had significant increases in COVID-19 cases. The study found that colleges solely with online classes do not increase infection rates.

According to the SUNY COVID-19 Tracker, a system set up to record cases at all of the state’s 64 colleges and universities, UAlbany, as of Wednesday evening, has an estimated total for 107 positive cases overall.

The state requires campuses that have more than 100 cases in a two-week period to move to remote teaching for two weeks.

The state is counting these cases in discrete two-week periods, rather than in rolling two-week periods, which Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen said would make more sense from both an epidemiologic and logic point of view.

For the two-week period beginning Sept. 12, the state tracker reports 60 cases so far. The tracker reports that 63 out of 230 rooms set aside for quarantine and isolation at UAlbany are in use.

Whalen said on Thursday that UAlbany continues to have a “low number of cases on campus compared to overall cases.”

The county’s health department is tallying the cases of students, staff, or faculty that work or live or attend classes on campus.

Whalen described her department’s relationship with UAlbany as “positive and productive.”

Food insecurity and calls for funding

Highlighting the increased food insecurity in Albany County, McCoy on Thursday called for federal support with more urgency than his earlier pleas.

In the first week of September, the county’s Department of Social Services had 820 applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, formerly known as food stamps.

This compares with 135 applications for the same week last year.

“It could be tied into how that federal aid stopped, the extra $600 …,” said McCoy. “This is the barometer for all counties.”

He went on, “As jobs don’t come back and more and more people get laid off, people are going to need more assistance in the county than they ever did before.”

McCoy said of the need for food assistance, “These are huge numbers that we’ve never had before; even with the recent recession of ’08-’09, we didn’t see an uptick of this magnitude.”

As president of the County Executives of the New York State Association of Counties, McCoy sent a letter to Congress, supporting the stimulus-package framework proposed by the bipartisan Congressional Problem Solvers Caucus, which has put forth a framework of $500 billion to help states, counties, and other local governments.

McCoy’s letter also called for the funding to be flexible and unrestricted so governments can use it to fill budget deficits created by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic shutdown.

He also urged modification of the way funding was distributed in the CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] Act, adopted in March, which made awards only to counties with more than 500,000 residents.

“We didn’t get a dime,” McCoy said, since Albany County has a population of about 307,000 according to the last federal census.

The lack of federal aid, McCoy said, will lead to state cuts, which will lead to county cuts. “It’s a trickle-down effect to the counties,” he said.

McCoy cited the essential work being done by county health departments in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and asked, “How do you continue to do the great work and you can’t go over the [tax] cap?”

McCoy went on, “We need a bipartisan approach with Republicans and Dems. We can’t continue to let this president continue to divide us among Democrat-run states against Republican-run states. We’re in this together and we need leadership.”

On Friday morning, Congressman  Tonko, a Democrat who represents the Capital District, held a virtual press conference “to call on the U.S. Senate to advance a meaningful rescue bill to help state and local officials stave off devastating cuts to essential services and protect the jobs of countless teachers, firefighters, healthcare workers, police officers and other essential workers,” said a notice announcing the conference.

It notes that it has been 126 days since the Democrat-dominated House passed the HEROES [Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions] Act, which, the notice says, would provide approximately $1.3 billion in local government funding directly to Capital Region communities.

Particularly with the recent withholding of aid to schools, some state legislators, including Democrat Patricia Fahy, who represents part of Albany County, have called for more taxing of the wealthy to provide funds for high-needs school districts.

On Thursday, Robert Mujika, the state’s budget director, put out a statement, saying, “New Jersey has announced they will pass a millionaire’s tax that raises the tax rate on millionaires to 10.79 percent. Some have suggested New York raise the top tax rate for billionaires and millionaires to 12 percent. The overwhelming majority of billionaires and millionaires in this state live or work in New York City. The combined state and city income tax rate is already 12.6 percent — which is higher than New Jersey’s new top rate or a proposed 12 percent ‘billionaire/millionaire tax rate.’”

Cuomo has said that raising taxes on the wealthy puts the state at a competitive disadvantage because people can go to other states and taxes are very high in New York State to begin with.

McCoy on Thursday said, “Over 70 percent of my budget is unfunded mandates, meaning that the State Senate and Assembly tell us what programs we have to run … but they don’t give us the funding.”

He called on the state representatives to “figure out the schools, figure out the problems going around the state of New York but realize we have, still, a health crisis going on, on top of an economic crisis.”

McCoy concluded, “People in this county need these services more than they’ve ever needed them before in life. They need it now. And they’re going to need it going into the future.”

The state’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, also underscored the need for federal aid as he released the State Cash Report for August, showing that state tax receipts are $3.2 billion lower than last year. He noted state tax receipts of $4.3 billion in August were $309 million above the latest projections by the state Division of Budget, but $219 million below collections in August 2019.

“Tax revenues continue to fall short of levels needed to fund education, health care and other vital services in this year’s budget,” DiNapoli said in a statement, releasing the report. “The revenue hole the pandemic created is getting deeper.”

Drops were noted in both personal income tax and sales-tax receipts.

Sales-tax receipts totaled $5.1 billion through August, $1.3 billion, or 20.2 percent, lower than last year. August sales tax receipts were $97.2 million, or 7.8 percent, below those a year earlier.

Local government sales-tax revenue declined by 7.8 percent in August compared to the same period last year, according to DiNapoli. August’s sales tax collections totaled $1.3 billion for counties and cities, or $111 million less than in August 2019.

This drop in revenue is similar to the decline in July of 8.2 percent, though much less extreme than the early months of the pandemic when sales tax collections plummeted by double digits.

From January through August, Albany County was down 10.7 percent in sales-tax revenues; the declines were in April (32.3 percent), May (29.5 percent), June (15.6 percent), July (9.7 percent), and August (10.1 percent).

“Since the pandemic hit, local governments have seen a massive drop in sales tax collections. This is hurting their bottom lines and many have few options to plug the hole,” DiNapoli said in a statement. 

Further, DiNapoli said the $150 billion federal Coronavirus Relief Fund could have been better aimed at the localities, especially New York City, that suffered the most severe impacts from the novel coronavirus, instead of being based on the most recent United States Census Bureau population data.

DiNapoli released an analysis that found the communities with high infection rates have spent most of their funds while other communities with low infection rates at the time the aid was given have not.

“Targeting aid to the communities that suffered the worst from the outbreak would have been more prudent than basing the distribution of funds on the population,” DiNapoli said in a statement, releasing his analysis. “As a result, regions like New York City and Long Island are facing significant budget shortfalls.”

CDC reversal

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its controversial guidance on COVID-19 testing.

In August, the CDC had changed its original guidelines to exclude testing people who do not show COVID-19 symptoms even if they have been exposed to the virus. In Albany County, and across New York State, the focus for months had been on increasing diagnostic testing, especially to identify COVID-19 in people who may be spreading the disease before they show symptoms or who never show symptoms.

Cuomo at the time said, “I’ve spoken to health experts from around the globe. None of them will say that this makes any sense from a health point of view. The only plausible rationale is they want fewer people taking tests because, as the president has said, if we don’t take tests, you won’t know that people are COVID-positive and the number of COVID-positive people will come down. Yes, that is true.

“That is his policy of ‘deny the problem.’ If you don’t take your temperature, you won’t know that you have a fever. Yes, that is true. But it totally violates public-health standards and rationale, and just fosters his failed policy of denial.”

Both New York State and Albany County stayed the course, continuing to test asymptomatic people.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the new guidance was published against scientists’ objections. The Department of Health and Human Services did the rewriting and then “dropped” it into the CDC’s public website, flouting the agency’s strict scientific review process, The Times reported.

On Friday, Cuomo issued a statement saying, “Today the CDC has reversed itself — that is not enough. How do they compensate for the lives lost and the millions in expenses and who was responsible for distorting the truth and jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans?”

Benefits

Also on Friday, the state’s Department of Labor announced that New York has paid nearly $1.9 billion in Lost Wages Assistance benefits to 2.26 million New Yorkers this week, representing retroactive payments of $300 for the weeks ending Aug. 2, 9, and 16.

In total, New York State has now paid $44.5 billion in benefits to New Yorkers during the COVID-19 pandemic — representing more than 21 typical years’ worth of benefits paid in just six months.

In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved New York for the second and final round of funding for Lost Wages Assistance. This round of funding provides three additional weeks of benefits, paid retroactively for the weeks ending Aug. 23, Aug. 30, and Sept. 6. New Yorkers will begin to receive these payments next week.

Also on Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture announced that up to an additional $14 billion for agricultural producers who continue to face market disruptions and associated costs because of COVID-19. Sign-up for the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program will begin Sept. 21 and run through Dec. 11. 

A complete list of eligible commodities, payment rates and calculations can be found on farmers.gov/cfap.

Holiday guidelines

On Monday, the CDC published guidelines on holiday celebrations.

“Celebrating virtually or with members of your own household pose low risk for spread,” says the CDC and goes on to recommend small, short, outdoor gatherings where participants wear masks and stay at least six feet from one another.

The CDC lists lower-risk, moderate-risk, and higher-risk ways to celebrate. For example, for Halloween, carving pumpkins at home or having a virtual costume party is lower-risk.

Participating in one-way trick-or-treating or going to an outdoor haunted house is moderate-risk. Higher-risk activities include traditional trick-or-treating, going on a hayride, or going to an indoor haunted house.

Similarly, for Thanksgiving, eating a meal with only people in your household or watching sports or parades from home is lower-risk. Visiting pumpkin patches where people use hand-sanitizer or eating a meal outdoors is moderate-risk. Attending a crowded parade or shopping in a crowded store is higher-risk.

New tool

On Monday, the state’s Office for the Aging announced the launch of CV19 CheckUp, billed as “a free, anonymous, personalized online tool that evaluates an individual’s risks associated with COVID-19 based on their life situation and individual behavior and provides recommendations and resources to reduce those risks.”

The state developed the new tool in partnership with BellAge Inc. and the Association on Aging in New York.

“This tool, which we will make available to all New Yorkers, helps individuals understand their risk based on their life situation and personal behavior and offers recommendations to reduce those risks while also connecting people to services, if needed,” said Greg Olsen, the acting director of the Office for the Aging in a release announcing its launch.

CV19 CheckUp uses artificial intelligence to analyze data each person provides by completing an online questionnaire. It is designed for those who are considered high risk, including older adults, low-income individuals, ethnic and racial minorities, and LGBTQ communities.

The tool’s algorithms are driven by science and medicine, using data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, according to the release. CV19 CheckUp is free to users. It is anonymous and does not require a name, email address, or identifier of any type.

Newest numbers

On Wednesday morning, the county executive’s office announced the county now has  2,862 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Of the new cases, 13 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, and three did not have a clear source of infection detected at this time.

Currently, 854 county residents are under quarantine, up from 829 on Tuesday. The five-day average for new daily positives decreased to 16 from 19.2. There are now 92 active cases in the county, down from 104 on Tuesday.

So far, 11,586 county residents have completed quarantine. Of those who completed quarantine, 2,770 of them had tested positive and recovered.

Eight county residents remain hospitalized with COVID-19. The county’s hospitalization rate has decreased slightly from 0.28 percent to 0.27 percent.

Albany County’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 134.

“Yesterday marked a tragic milestone for our country — 200,000 COVID-related deaths since the outbreak began, with the toll growing higher by the day,” said Mccoy in a statement Wednesday, releasing the latest tallies. “That’s more than the combined populations of the city of Albany and the town of Colonie, wiped out. My heart breaks for every family who has lost someone they love to this pandemic, especially those here in Albany County.”