Remember to cover your face
HUDSON—Columbia County Board of Supervisors Chairman Matt Murell reminds everyone that wearing a face covering is now mandatory when six feet of distance cannot be maintained between yourself and others.
“If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot maintain that distance, you must wear a mask or some sort of cloth covering over your nose and mouth. It’s simple. If the virus cannot find a host, it will die.” Mr. Murell said in his Sunday, April 19 Covid-19-update press release.
Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports has shown that a high population of county residents are still working, many are visiting grocery stores and pharmacies, and many continue to visit others.
The upcoming expansion of testing capability in the county will enable officials to get a better picture of how the virus is affecting the community.
“Friday we had one of the highest one-day counts of new cases for Columbia County,” County Department of Health Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Chuck Kaiser said in the Sunday release.
“Whether that will continue to trend up for the next week or so we don’t know yet. Testing surges will skew those trends but can help confirm the ‘those tested’ to ‘those positive’ ratio. We can then extrapolate that to the larger population at hand to get an idea of what percentage of our population have the disease. Once approved, accurate, serologic tests come on board, this will help us determine not only those who recently were infected, but also those who may have developed an immunity. This is vital information that will assist in our planning moving forward,” Mr. Kaiser said.
The New York State Department of Health’s (DOH) Weekly Influenza Surveillance Report shows Columbia County leading the state’s 62 counties in influenza cases for the week ending April 11, county Department of Health Director Jack Mabb said in the Sunday release.
The report is calculated based on lab-confirmed influenza cases per 100,000 of population, according to the state DOH.
As of Sunday morning, New York State reported that 596,562 tests for Covid-19 had been administered statewide. Of that number, 236,732 yielded a positive result.
There are currently 16,967 individuals hospitalized, with 5,002 of those admitted to the ICU. At this time, 13,362 have died from the virus, said county Director of Emergency Management David W. Harrison, Jr.
As of April 19 at 1 p.m., according to the Columbia County DOH, the county has 11 community members that have died from Covid-19; 118 positive cases of Covid-19; 53 of the 118 cases have recovered from virus; 10 of the positive cases are hospitalized, 3 of those are in the ICU. The DOH has received 882 completed test results for Columbia County residents; 103 residents are under mandatory quarantine and 12 under precautionary quarantine. There are 2 residents with suspected, not tested cases.
For the most up-to-date, accurate information visit the County Department of Health’s website at https://www.columbiacountynyhealth.com/home/coronavirus-covid-19 or their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Columbia-County-Department-of-Health-469399129790791/. The state’s coronavirus website, with up-to-the-minute information, can be found at https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/home.