ALBANY COUNTY — On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said that soon states will be getting more COVID-19 vaccine doses from the federal government and that local governments, like Albany County, charged with vaccinating essential workers can add and prioritize groups within federal and state guidelines.

“There is no ‘one size fits all’ here,” he said.

Cuomo, who chairs the National Governors Association, had a call with White House officials on Tuesday morning and learned that the original 16-percent increase promised by the Biden administration has been bumped up to 20 percent.

“The increase is now going to go from 16 to about 20 percent as a direct allocation,” Cuomo said at his Tuesday press briefing. “That means the state will then turn around and supply 20 percent additional to the local governments, so they can count on an additional 20 percent in the coming weeks.”

Cuomo also said that local governments are in different situations “and we want to give them more flexibility.”

Initially, the state set up two tiers for administering vaccinations, based on federal guidance:

— 1a, which included nursing-home workers and residents, all of whom have now been offered shots, Cuomo said, and hospital workers of which 75 percent have been vaccinated; and

— 1b, which consists of essential workers, ranging from police officers to teachers, as well as senior citizens.

The state’s system now has pharmacies vaccinating people age 65 and older, local governments vaccinating essential workers, and hospitals vaccinating health-care workers.

“If a local health department, county government wants to add to their — what’s called 1b — prioritization, if they want to add developmentally disabled facilities, if they want to add taxi drivers, Uber drivers, restaurant workers, they can do that if they think it works within their prioritization locally,” Cuomo said at his press briefing on Tuesday.

He went on about local governments, “They are getting more, so theoretically they would have additional supply to make those decisions, but that’s going to be up to the local government to add in the 1b category if they think it makes sense.”

Cuomo also said that the state is “going to look at targeting vaccinations by locations with high positivity rates,” starting with a demonstration, holding a mass vaccination clinic in Yankee Stadium solely for Bronx residents.

“Mass vaccination, get the high positivity down, and target people in areas where the positivity is higher, which tend to have a high predominance of Black, poor, hard-to-access communities, Latino communities,” he said.

Cuomo also announced that the federal government is starting a program to give vaccine doses directly to pharmacies. Currently, New York State is getting 300,000 doses weekly from the federal government.

“The federal is going to give an additional 10 percent of that state’s allocation to the private pharmacies,” Cuomo said. “So, private pharmacies going forward will have more.”

This means that New York pharmacies will be getting about 30,000 doses each week.

Cuomo noted that roughly half of New Yorkers get vaccinated against flu and a large percentage use pharmacies for that.

“The White House is also going to reimburse the state government for FEMA reimbursement,” said Cuomo, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Finally, Cuomo stressed that the federal government sends vaccine in two allocations, first and second doses. Both vaccines currently approved for emergency use require two doses, several weeks apart, for full effect.

“There’s been a dialogue by some governors and some health experts saying: start to use the second dose as a first dose,” said Cuomo. “In other words, we have about 300,000 second doses this week, use them for a first dose. The federal government does not now allow them. Why? Because then you have to really know what your future production is.”

Newest numbers

Four more county residents died of COVID-19 since Monday, the county’s executive, Daniel McCoy, announced in a release Tuesday morning.

The latest victims of the virus were two men in their sixties, a woman in her eighties, and a woman in her nineties. This brings the county’s COVID-19 death toll to 321.

As cases across the nation continue to decline from a post-holiday high on Jan. 8, they are also continuing to decline in New York State and Albany County.

For the second day in a row, Albany County had fewer than 100 new COVID-19 cases for the first time in more than two months. McCoy announced 99 new cases since Monday.

This brings the county’s total of confirmed cases to 18,504. Of the 99 new cases, 58 did not have clear sources of infection identified, 35 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, and six were health-care workers or residents of congregate settings.

The five-day average for new daily positives has decreased to 139.8 from 163.2. There are now 1,365 active cases in the county, down from 1,459 on Monday.

The number of Albany County residents under mandatory quarantine decreased to 2,482 from 2,646. So far, 55,540 residents have completed quarantine. Of those, 17,139 had tested positive and recovered. That is an increase of 185 recoveries since Monday.

There were 12 new hospitalizations overnight, and there are 146 county residents currently hospitalized from the virus — a net increase of three. There are now 15 patients in intensive-care units, up two from Monday. 

Among the state’s 10 regions, the Capital Region continues to have the worst rates for available hospital and ICU beds.

Currently, 422 Capital Region residents are hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 0.04 percent of the population and leaves 27 percent of the region’s hospital beds available — an improvement of several percentage points in the last few days.

Statewide, 0.04 percent of New Yorkers are hospitalized with the disease, leaving 34 percent of the state’s hospital beds available.

At the same time, 201 of the Capital Region’s 201 ICU beds are filled, leaving 18 percent available.

Statewide, 26 percent of ICU beds are available.

As of Monday, the Capital Region has an infection rate of 4.67 percent, as a seven-day average. Statewide, the positivity rate is 4.95 percent.

As of Monday Albany County has an infection rate, as a seven-day rolling average of 5.3 percent, according to the state’s dashboard.

Airport masks

Beginning Monday, federal Transportation Security Administration workers are empowered to enforce the federal government’s mask requirement at TSA checkpoints and throughout the nation’s airports.

The mask mandate was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Jan. 29 to protect the transportation system as well as passengers and employees from the COVID-19 virus and to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 throughout the transportation system, according to Acting Secretary David Pekoske.

Albany International Airport first instituted a mask requirement for all passengers, guests, and staff in April 2020, according to a release from the airport.

According to the TSA, people without a mask will be asked to wear or obtain one to proceed through the security screening process. Depending on the circumstance, those who refuse to wear a mask may be subject to a civil penalty for attempting to circumvent screening requirements, interfering with screening personnel, or a combination of those offenses, the agency said.

Stopping fraud

The state’s labor department announced on Tuesday that it has identified over 425,000 fraudulent unemployment benefit claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing fraudsters from stealing more than $5.5 billion in benefits.

Since the pandemic began in March 2020, the labor department has paid over $65 billion to more than 4 million New Yorkers — representing more than 30 typical years’ worth of benefits paid in just 11 months. 

Criminals are using real New Yorkers’ identities — likely stolen during previous data breaches involving institutions like banks, insurance companies, and major employers — to file fraudulent claims and illegally collect benefits in the name of individuals who are not unemployed, according to a release from the labor department.

Anyone who receives a monetary determination letter from the Department of Labor, but did not apply for unemployment benefits should immediately report it to the department at on.ny.gov/uifraud.

The department has released a video to educate New Yorkers on avoiding fraud.