Albany County sees highest number of coronavirus hospitalizations, 6 deaths
In Rensselaer County: 2 deaths and 40 news cases
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy. (Will Waldron/Times Union)
Will Waldron/Albany Times Union
Six people died overnight from coronavirus, as Albany County saw 61 people hospitalized — another grim record in what has already been a deadly and dangerous month, County Executive Dan McCoy said in a briefing on Saturday.
Five of the six were not residents of a group home. The deaths — one woman in her 50s; one woman in her 60s; a man and woman in their 70s; and a man and a woman in their 80s — bring the number of people who've died from COVID-19 in the county to 157. The one death at the congregate setting was not from the county-owned Shaker Place Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.
Just this week alone, the virus killed nine county residents.
Rensselaer County, meanwhile, reported two deaths and 40 news cases Saturday evening.
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"I hope people are waking up and realizing that COVID-19 is here. We have to be more vigilant now than we've ever been," McCoy said. "We're setting records for the month of November, and I don't like the records we're setting."
The last time six people died in a single day from COVID-19 was May 4, McCoy said.
"I think when we look back on November and the numbers that we've seen, we are recognizing that November was a dark month," said County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen. "It has positioned us, unfortunately, very poorly for the upcoming holiday season."
The county recorded 67 new positive cases overnight, McCoy said. Of those, 15 had close contact with an infected person and one is a health care worker. Fifty-one people reported no clear source of infection, continuing a troubling trend of residents possibly not being upfront about their recent outings, which McCoy and Whalen have repeatedly said is irresponsible.
Whalen said the county has recently worked with local hospitals on improving systems of data collection around hospitalizations. Whalen said they've started to get data from those improved systems this week, and they've detected an uptick in hospitalizations.
Whalen said the numbers are concerning because it means the people who have coronavirus are "becoming more ill."
When there are more hospitalizations, Whalen said, there is a concern about "the capacity of our hospitals to be able to take care of people."
"We see incidences of surge capacity affecting patient care in other parts of the country," Whalen said. "We do not want that to happen here in Albany County."
The 61 people hospitalized is up from the 43 reported on Friday. The previous record for hospitalizations, set on Nov. 20, was 45.
Six patients were in the intensive care unit on Saturday, down from 10 on Friday.
Whalen also urged people to get their flu shots.
The share of people testing positive for coronavirus in the county over a seven-day average, which is the metric being used to determine microcluster zones, has topped 3% for the last seven days, according to the most recent state data available on Saturday morning.
Microcluster zones could be as small as a ZIP code, census tract or neighborhood. And to determine what will be designated as a microcluster, the state can also look at average daily cases, cases per 100,000 residents and hospital admission trends.
On Friday, 140 new cases were confirmed overnight — the second-highest one-day total for the county to date.
The Capital Region saw its 400th coronavirus death on Friday, and more than a third of those have hailed from Albany County.
Forty new cases were confirmed to the Rensselaer County Health Department, officials said Saturday.
In its Facebook post, the county said its two latest deaths were of residents at the Eddy Heritage House in Troy. The deaths of the 86-year-old woman and 83-year-old woman are the county's 56th and 57th deaths of residents from COVID-19 to date, officials said.
The county also announced two new cases involving employees at the county-operated Van Rensselaer Manor nursing home. The two cases are the county's 31st and 32nd cases involving VRM employees. There has been 23 cases involving residents there.
The county is also seeing an increase among students, teachers, health care workers and residents at adult care facilities.
New York state update
Forty-two people were reported to have died of the illness Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's office said Saturday.
In other key figures, there were 3,287 patient hospitalizations, with 654 in intensive care units. The statewide positive test rate was just a shade under 4 percent.
Cuomo's message for Saturday:
"We are entering a challenging period of sustained COVID-19 spread across this state. It's up to you, your neighborhood and your community to slow the spread. Our micro-cluster strategy can target very small areas with restrictions, so the actions each of us take and the actions our neighbors take may seem small, but they make a big difference."
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Eduardo Medina is a Hearst Fellow. An Alabama native, he grew up in Birmingham and went to school at Auburn University. Before joining the Times Union in 2020, he interned at the San Francisco Chronicle as a metro reporter and was editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman. You can reach him at Eduardo.Medina@timesunion.com.