8 more deaths, 188 new cases reported in Albany County

Four of those deaths were from earlier in January, Mccoy says

Eight more residents have died from COVID -19, but four of those deaths occurred in early January and are only now being reported, said County Executive Dan Mccoy at a briefing on Saturday.

“You’d think 11 months into this, we’d have the tracking system down,” Mccoy said, expressing frustration with the previously unreported deaths.

Those eight deaths include a man in his 50s; a man and woman in their 60s; two women in their 70s; a man in his 80s; and a man and a woman in their 90s.

The county has seen 86 people die during the month of January, compared to 66 in December and 55 in May, Mccoy said.

“COVID -19 is not done with us. I know we’re fatigued. I know we want to open up that door,” Mccoy said. “Things are never going to go back to the way things were. It’s a different world we live in.”

Dr. Elizabeth Whalen, the county’s health commissioner, said the county is at a pivotal time of “being able to start to vaccinate members of the community and start to work toward getting back to some aspect of normalcy.

There were also 188 new COVID -19 cases overnight, up from 171 on Friday.

Of those new cases, 109 did not have a clear source of transmission, 57 had close contact with a positive case, 21 are healthcare workers or residents of a congregate setting, and one person reported out of state travel.

Eight new hospitalizations were reported overnight, Mccoy said, bringing the total number to 154, with 11 of them in the intensive care unit.

Statewide, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said as of 11 a.m. Saturday, New York’s health care distribution sites have received 1,471,145 first doses and administered 91 percent of the vaccinations and 76 percent of first and second doses. The allocation from the federal government continues to be delivered to providers for administration, Cuomo said.

In the Capital Region, more than 106,000 first and second doses have been administered.