Virus closes school

Hadley-luzerne outbreak prompts remote learning

Warren County school has fifth COVID infection./

Administrators in a Warren County school district have decided to close an elementary school for a week because of a fifth COVID-19 infection there.

The new positive at Hadley-luzerne’s Stuart Townsend Elementary School was the only new case reported Saturday by Warren County health officials on Saturday. Neither the school nor the county said whether the person was an employee or student. This appears to be the first local school to shut down because of an outbreak.

According to the school district, the person is now in quarantine and will have to recover, receive a negative COVID-19 test, and be cleared by the health department before returning to school.

“We continue to work closely with the Saratoga and Warren County health departments on contact tracing efforts with this most recent case,” a school district statement says.

For safety sake students will learn remotely from Sept.28 to Oct. 2, giving custodial staff time to sanitize and deep clean the entire building. “We also feel that this will help prevent the spread of these cases throughout the building and will give our Elementary school time to reset. Our hope is that everyone returns healthy and ready to move forward with the school year.”

Quarantines of those who had contact with the most recently infected person have been arranged as Warren County Health Services and the state Health Department work with district’s staff.

“We are hopeful temporary closing of the elementary school for a week will break the chain of infection with this small cluster of related cases,” County Health Services Director

Ginelle Jones said.

The county is also monitoring 21 active cases as of Saturday; all have mild illness. One who was hospitalized in recent days has been deemed recovered.

Albany County increase

After several days below the 20 mark, Albany County’s new daily COVID-19 case count leaped to 27 on Friday.

County Executive Dan Mccoy on Saturday said 20 of the new cases had close contact with positive cases, two reported outof-state travel, and five did not have a clear source of infection at this time.

Separately, 11 of the new positives are associated with the University at Albany, he noted in his daily report.

There are:

894 people under mandatory quarantine.

101 active cases in the county, up from 90 the previous day.

11,952 people who have completed quarantine.

2,820 people who tested positive but have recovered.

Also Saturday, the county Health Department was notified of a low risk community exposure for COVID at Maggie Mcfly’s restaurant at Crossgates Mall. The person worked last Saturday, Sept. 19, and Sunday, Sept. 20, and then tested positive. Interaction with the public was minimal. Anyone there with symptoms or concerns should consider testing, the county said.

New York state update

Statewide, there were four deaths Friday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office said. One percent of COVID-19 tests were positive. and there were 1,005 additional cases.