Additional positive cases confirmed in Guilderland
ALBANY, N.Y. » County Executive Dan McCoy announced on Friday the county now has four positive cases of coronavirus.
On Thursday, county officials announced that a Guilderland woman in her 30s and an off-campus University At Albany student from the city of Albany had tested positive.
McCoy said the two new cases live in the same home as the woman from Guilderland, including one of the individuals testing positive now being a middle school student from Farnsworth Middle School.
The two new cases are directly related to the individual who tested positive on Thursday in Guilderland. Officials said they had already been quarantined at home, remain there and are recovering.
“This is something that we’re prepared for,” McCoy said.
The Albany County Health Department advised Farnsworth Middle School to be shut down on Friday per guidelines established by Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier
this week regarding sanitizing and then re-assessing. However, the Guilderland School District made the decision to close all schools closed on Friday.
“This is an evolving situation, and I will continue to say that the numbers of positive cases will go up as more people are tested. I urge you to remain calm,” McCoy stated on Friday. “The plans are in place to test and monitor individuals for this virus.
“I continue to advise everyone to stay home if you’re sick; wash your hands frequently; don’t touch your face and cough and sneeze by covering your mouth, preferably with a tissue and then throwing it out.”
McCoy said the county closed its nursing home to visitors on Thursday as well as suspending all senior meal sites for the next 30 days and adult day care for seniors for the next month.
“We have an aging population in our community, we have over 60,000 seniors over the age of 60 that are vulnerable to this,” McCoy said. “So, I say to everyone out there, respectively, that are over the age of 60 or who have any respiratory or heart problems or a bad immune system, use caution.”
“These are things that are going to be the norm,” McCoy said related to cancellations and school closings.
Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen said both individuals in the new cases are doing well at home.
“We are happy that we were able to make these diagnoses in a short period of time,” Whalen said. “With these cases, we will be doing additional contact tracing, and we can expect additional testing, so the likelihood is that there will be more tests done and more cases that could be found in the near future.”
McCoy also spoke about grocery stores being very limited on products since people are “stockpiling” products now.
“We’re noticing that [a lot of store shelves are being cleaned out of products] like cleaners and paper products,” McCoy said. “I understand everyone has the impulse to go stockpile everything, but we’re asking [people] to leave stuff on the shelf for people that don’t have it. Take what you need, but you need to stockpile at this time.”
McCoy then discussed the impact that the coronavirus situation will have on the county budget.
“It’s going to have a big impact on our budget next year, but I can’t worry about that,” he said. “What I’m worried about is the safety and health of our residents, first and foremost, and I’m not so worried about the dollars amount.”