ALBANY COUNTY — On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which Biden is expected to sign into law on Friday.
This capped Albany County’s 52nd week — one full year — of coping with the coronavirus. The county had announced its first two cases on March 12, 2020.

A sense of relief, even jubilation, pervaded Monday morning’s county COVID-19 press conference as Executive Daniel McCoy celebrated Saturday’s Senate passage of the act.

No Republican Senators voted for the measure, which was applauded by both Democratic and Republican members of the New York State Association of Counties on Saturday.

“This is the first time the federal government has provided direct unrestricted aid to the counties and the local governments of the United States. It’s unprecedented,” said Stephen Acquario, executive director of the association, at McCoy’s Monday press conference.

Acquario praised both Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who shepherded the bill through, and McCoy who had served as president of the association as, over the last year, it lobbied for funds to go to local governments.

McCoy said that, rather than the $59 million he predicted on Friday for Albany County in aid from the bill, the Senate had scaled it back to $55 million.

He reported aid to other local municipalities: Colonie, $7.5 million; Bethlehem, $5.9 million; Guilderland, $6 million; New Scotland, $1.5 million; and Altamont, $1.3 million. 

“Every county leader advocated for the passage of this federal assistance …,” said Acquario. “Both parties — upstate, downstate, urban, rural. They’ve all been impacted. They’ve all been working non-stop.”

The plan includes $3.8 billion for the state’s 62 counties, to be allocated based on population. The five counties that make up New York City are to get $1.6 billion and the other 57 counties are to get $2.2 billion. New York City will receive another $4 billion through Community Development Block Grant formula funding.

The Rescue Plan’s funding can be used to respond to the public health emergency caused by the coronavirus as well as to address the economic fallout that came with it, including assistance to households, small businesses and not-for-profits, and aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel and hospitality.

The funding may also be used to help governments provide services and make investments in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure.

Acquario went over a list of things he said have been learned from the pandemic, including the need to invest in local health care; the need for a better system of command and control; and also a better system to procure personal protective equipment and to carry out contact tracing and vaccination; inequities in health care; and the challenges of remote learning in schools.

The funds need to be used, he said, “to strengthen communities for the future.”

McCoy went over the eligibility for $1,400 stimulus checks: Single Americans earning less than $75,000; single parents earning less than $112,000; and couples earning less than $150,000 will receive the checks.

He also noted that schools will receive $160 billion, $4 billion will go for more vaccine centers, $28.6 billion will go to grants for restaurants and art centers, and $10 billion will go to small businesses.

“This is the aid we needed,” said McCoy.

In an unrelated release on Saturday, New York’s Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said, “A year after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in New York State, the economic disruption caused by the pandemic remains severe. One key measure is the total number of New Yorkers claiming unemployment insurance benefits …

“The figure remains elevated 11 months after the initial surge of job losses, with 2.4 million claims reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as of mid-February 2021.”

The American Rescue Plan, in addition to the one-time direct payments of up to $1,400, extends jobless aid of $300 a week to last until Labor Day. The plan also expands tax cuts for families with children and increases subsidies for child care.

The act passed in the House, by a vote of 220 to 211, with just one Democrat — Jared Golden from Maine — not voting in favor.

Vaccinations expand

Throughout the week, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office has continued to issue upbeat press releases on declining infection rates and increased numbers of vaccinations. 

A mass vaccination site, run jointly by the state and federal governments, opened at the Washington Avenue Armory in Albany while the state site at the uptown University at Albany campus continues to administer vaccinations.

Albany County’s point of dispensing, or POD, administered more vaccine doses this week than previously and the county also saw pop-up sites in the rural Hilltowns and in underserved city neighborhoods.

On Tuesday, Cuomo announced that, starting Wednesday, New Yorkers 60 and older would be eligible to receive vaccinations.

Formerly, New Yorkers, to be eligible — after all the nursing home residents and workers had been offered vaccine — had to be 65 or older, or had to have comorbidities, or had to be on a list of essential workers.

“I encourage those who are newly eligible to make appointments where they can, and to use our pre-registration tool to get their names on the list,” said Mccoy in a statement on Wednesday. 

Many vaccination sites draw from the county’s pre-registration list. McCoy said earlier in the week that the list of about 30,000 had been depleted.

Residents can pre-register for a vaccination through the county’s website at alb.518c19.com.

Cuomo also announced two other big changes in the state’s administration of vaccine doses. Starting on Wednesday, March 17:

— Eligibility will expand to public-facing government and public employees, not-for-profit workers who provide public-facing services to needy New Yorkers, and essential in-person public-facing building service workers.

“That includes public works people, social service people, child service care workers, DMV workers, a lot of the CSEA employees, also election workers, et cetera,” said Cuomo.

McCoy has advocated for Albany County workers to be eligible for vaccination and said in a statement on Wednesday, “Our county employees risked their health and safety to provide essential programs and services and kept our communities safe during the worst of the pandemic. They deserved to be deemed essential to get the vaccine”; and

— All providers can vaccinate anyone who is eligible to receive the vaccine, except for pharmacies.

“That means right now, the local health departments have certain categories they can do, FQHCs have certain categories,” Cuomo said of Federally Qualified Health Centers, “hospitals have certain categories. They will all be able to vaccinate everyone except for pharmacies.”

Pharmacies will be limited to vaccinating just two groups of people — educators, and people 60 and older.

“Teachers is a federal mandate, part of Joe Biden’s wanting to open school,” said Cuomo. “Pharmacies are equipped to check ages, 60-plus, 65-plus, it’s a driver’s license; they sell cigarettes, et cetera, so they’re accustomed to checking age. They’re not accustomed to checking work group identification, et cetera. So pharmacies will just do age, 60-plus, and teachers who are also easily identified.”

Cuomo also said he learned in a White House call that vaccine allocation will remain flat for the next two weeks.

“We had that very large Johnson & Johnson surge last week that we’re administering this week,” he said of the most recently authorized, one-shot vaccination. “That’s why we opened 24-hour mass vaccination sites.”

The state announced on Monday it was opening 10 new mass-vaccination sites, including one in the Capital Region, in Queensbury.

Cuomo said the vaccine allocation in April should start to increase dramatically.

“We still have a racial disparity,” Cuomo said on Tuesday. “I don’t think any state is working harder at breaking down that racial disparity, but it still exists. So we’ll have houses of worship that can actually be pop-up sites themselves, and we encourage houses of worship to come forward to do that.”

As of Wednesday, 19.9 percent of New Yorkers had received at least one dose of vaccine, according to a release from the governor’s office, and 9.8 percent had had a second shot.

The first two vaccines to get federal emergency authorization — Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech — each require two doses administered several weeks apart.

In Albany County, as of Tuesday morning, 23.7 percent of residents had received a first dose, according to a release from Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy’s Office.

Opening up

Cuomo announced on Sunday that restaurants outside of New York City can move to 75-percent capacity on March 19. On Wednesday, he joined with New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, to announce that both New Jersey and New York City will expand indoor dining capacity to 50 percent on March 19.

“The numbers are down; when the numbers are down, we adjust the economic reopening valve,” said Cuomo of falling COVID-19 infection rates at a press briefing on Sunday. 

He said that Connecticut will move to full capacity for restaurants on March 19 and Massachusetts had already done so on March 1.

Cuomo also said he would sign the legislature’s emergency powers bill on Sunday. He has issued close to 100 executive orders related to the pandemic in the past year and will be able to modify those but not act unilaterally.

“With the new law that the legislature passed, we will make this public, the legislature has five days to review the change and we’ll discuss it with any members of the legislature or local governments who have issues,” Cuomo said. “Legislature has the ability to cancel it with 50 percent of the vote.”

Assemblyman Chris Tague was among Republicans criticizing the bill, calling it a fake repeal of Cuomo’s executive powers.

“Assembly Democrats are rewarding his abhorrent behavior and decision-making by letting him retain control of making decisions on the fate of restaurants, schools, gyms and small businesses across the state — including shutting them down,” Tague said in a statement on March 5.

Tague was referencing allegations from women claiming sexul harassment from Cuomo and also March 4 stories in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, saying Cuomo aids had rewritten a report from the state’s health department to hide the known magnitude of the nursing-home death toll.

Cuomo reiterated at Sunday’s press briefing that he would not resign as governor and stressed the importance of due process.

Cuomo spoke to the press only one other time this week, in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, during which he reiterated that he had never touched anyone inappropriately and never made any inappropriate advances.

“There are some legislators who suggest that I resign because of accusations that are made against me,” Cuomo said on Sunday. “I was elected by the people of the state, I wasn’t elected by politicians. I’m not going to resign because of allegations.”

A total of six women have now accused Cuomo of sexual harassment. The matter is being investigated by Attorney General Letitia James.

“This is not about me and accusations about me; the attorney general can handle that,” Cuomo said on Sunday. “This is about doing the people’s business, and this next six months I believe will determine the future trajectory for New York State. What we do in this budget, how successful we are in rebuilding, how positive we portray this state going forward, how resilient we appear.”

While Democratic leaders, including Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the State Senate’s majority leader, have called for Cuomo’s resignation, on Wednesday, the Republican leader of the State Senate, Rob Ortt, called for Cuomo’s impeachment.

“The governor is no longer capable of leading New York at a time when we need leadership,” Ortt said in a statement. “New York State is still fighting this deadly pandemic and we are days away from beginning state budget negotiations. With so much at stake, he and his closest aides continue to plunge Albany into a morass of scandal, the scale and scope of which are truly unprecedented.”

 Also on Wednesday, Bill Hammond, senior fellow at the Empire Center, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit think tank based in Albany, released an analysis titled, “New York’s Pandemic Progress Deteriorates Along with Cuomo’s Political Standing.”

Hammond graphs New York’s newly diagnosed cases per day, pointing out the numbers have been virtually flat since mid-February at just under 40 per 100,000 residents, which is roughly double the national average and second only to New Jersey.

While New York’s high infection rate might in part reflect its higher level of testing, Hammond writes, that would not affect its hospitalization rate, which is back to its level of mid-May 2020.

“The infection rate declined sharply after the New Year, but leveled off in mid-February,” Hammond writes. “The reasons are unclear, but could include an erosion of compliance with social distancing rules or the advent of coronavirus variants that are more infectious.

“Around the same time New York’s progress stalled, Governor Cuomo was hit with a series of scandals over his handling of nursing home data and allegations of bullying behavior and sexual harassment. 

“Cuomo’s briefings on the pandemic, which have been less frequent, have accentuated positive news. He has not highlighted New York’s worst-in-the-nation hospitalization rate, and he has continued rolling back coronavirus-related restrictions, albeit more slowly than in some other states.”

Newest numbers

On Wednesday morning, McCoy announced in a release, the county had 61 new cases of COVID-19, bringing Albany County’s year-long total to 21,083.

Of the new cases, 37 did not have clear sources of infection identified, 21 had close contact with someone infected with the disease, two were health-care workers or residents of a congregate setting, and one reported traveling out of state.

The five-day average for new daily positives has decreased to 60.2 from 66.2. There are now 521 active cases in the county, down from 532 yesterday.

The number of Albany County residents under quarantine decreased to 1,377 from 1,384. So far, 66,398 residents have completed quarantine. Of those, 20,562 had tested positive and recovered. That is an increase of 70 recoveries since Tuesday.

There were two new hospitalizations overnight, and there are now 29 county residents hospitalized from the virus —one fewer than Tuesday. There are currently four patients in intensive-care units, down from five on Tuesday.

Albany County’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 361.

Currently, 95 Capital Region residents are hospitalized with COVID-19, which is 0.01 percent of the region’s population and leaves 35 percent of its hospital beds available, according to a Wednesday release from the governor’s office.

Statewide, 0.02 percent of New Yorkers are hospitalized with the disease, leaving 36 percent of the state’s hospital beds available.

The Capital Region’s percent of ICU beds has dropped again to 17 percent, the worst in the state. Currently, 200 of the region’s 240 ICUbeds are filled.

Statewide, 29 percent of ICU beds are available.

Statewide, the infection rate, as of Tuesday, as a seven-day average was 3.11 percent.

Albany county, as of Tuesday, as a seven-day rolling average, has an infection rate of 2.2 percent, according to the state’s dashboard.