Albany County officials urge travelers to self-quarantine
ALBANY, N.Y. » During a Monday morning press conference, Albany County Executive Dan McCoy and Albany County Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Elizabeth Whalen expounded upon the reasoning for a spike in cases this past weekend.
The Capital Region was tops in the state for percentage positive in cases at 2%, even higher than New York City at 1.3%.
As McCoy and Whalen discussed, a large portion of those cases could be attributed to nursing homes, travelers from states with high infection rates, and groups of mostly youths congregating.
“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a bit of the uptick in the Capital Region. A report from the governor [Sunday] found we had the highest percentage of positives in the state at 2%. The next highest for any region in the state was New York City at 1.3,” McCoy noted.
“So you can see we spent our weekend looking at our numbers and going through all the data because this is stuff that we watch for,” McCoy added.
The county executive also detailed some of the sources attributable to the increase in cases.
“The state is also looking at Rensselaer County for its part in the reason for the increase,” McCoy said regarding the Riverside Nursing Home.
“They had 23 new positive cases yesterday linked to people traveling back from Georgia
which Dr. Whalen brought up on Tuesday, talking about people traveling. The other issue we’re having is snowbirds, people that have summer homes down in Florida that now are coming back and not self- quarantining or coming back infected and spreading it without knowing it,” McCoy remarked on infected travelers.
Whalen also ferreted out the data concerning the spikes in cases.
“Again we are seeing [the] highest cases in the 20 to 29-year- old group. It’s important to note that a lot of those cases, they’re not very ill,” she said. “They may have mild symptoms, they may have just been
tested because they were being screened for their jobs and the risk though is that outside of their jobs and at home they can spread this to other individuals who are more susceptible and can suffer more serious illness and that is what we want to prevent.”
Whalen also echoed McCoy’s sentiments on the need for travelers to follow quarantine protocols outlined by the state.
“I think it’s really necessary for people when you’re coming back from one of the affected states to comply with that regulation, to make sure that you are staying at home,” Whalen said.
“We have seen people come back and feel completely fine, test negative and then two days later test positive and in that situation, there were other people that were infected be
cause of that individual. We have seen cases that have come through our airport where people were fine and then tested positive within a couple of days,” Whalen continued.
“So if you are coming back, please consider testing, but definitely stay home for your quarantine period,” Whalen added, urging those travelers to also contact their local health department.
In addition, Whalen emphasized the importance of making sure New York doesn’t catch fire with the spread of the virus as much of the rest of the country is going through now.
“We know that the prevalence of COVID in many of the states of concern is on an order that we haven’t seen here and we don’t want to see it here and we could if we’re not mindful and if we’re not careful,” Whalen added.
As of Monday morning, Albany County has seen 2,007 confirmed positive cases of COVID-19, 413 are in mandatory quarantine. An additional 10 positive cases were confirmed Monday, bringing the active cases to 43. Thus far 6,068 have completed quarantine, 1,964 people have tested positive and recovered, with an increase of 10 recoveries from Sunday. Plus, two people are hospitalized, down one from Sunday.