Cuomo’s shutdown rules a moving target
Governor not shutting down areas despite microclusters qualifying under state policy
As COVID -19 cases surge throughout the fall and winter, Cuomo appears to have relaxed the guidelines requiring areas to shut down./
As COVID -19 cases have surged throughout the fall and winter, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appears to have relaxed the guidelines requiring areas to shut down.
The state’s microcluster policy says that areas will enter “red zones” with all nonessential businesses closed — commonly understood as a full shutdown, as seen in the spring — if their seven-day averages for test positivity rates exceed 4 percent in high-population areas or 5 percent in lower ones.
Based on the current numbers for regional positivity rates, which Cuomo showed in a slide presentation during his Friday coronavirus briefing, all regions except the Southern Tier and the North Country should be in complete shutdowns. But that has not happened. The governor’s office did not immediately respond Friday to questions about when that changed and why.
Across the state, there are currently 28 microclusters. They are all orange and yellow, which means there’s not a single area that is fully shut down in the state, despite that almost all of those areas qualify under the state’s policy.
The Capital Region’s sevenday test positivity rate was reported at 6.49 percent on Friday, for instance, surpassing either the 4 and 5 percent thresholds. But no microclusters of any kind, even yellow or orange zones, have been declared in the region. Only the positivity rate of the Southern Tier was low enough to avoid microcluster status, and the North Country’s rate was high enough to warrant an orange zone, but lower than a red.
“Shutdowns are very, very harmful. They hurt people. They have mental health consequences,” Cuomo said. “The last thing that anybody wants is a shutdown.”
Cuomo has recently focused his concern on hospitalizations rather than the positivity rates, stressing that hospitals around the state need to coordinate to avoid overflowing their bed and intensive care unit capacities. Shutdowns will be triggered if hospitals edge too close to their capacity limits within three weeks. There are more than 6,000 New Yorkers hospitalized for COVID -19, in comparison to September when less than 500 people were hospitalized. But total hospitalizations went down Friday, decreasing by 66. Admissions to intensive care units and patient intubations ticked down, also.
“Those are good signs. What does it mean? We’ll find out if it continues tomorrow, but it’s good news,” Cuomo said.
But, as Cuomo has said many times, hospitalizations, intubations and ultimately deaths are a linear function of the number of cases. When cases go up, hospitalizations will reliably follow weeks later, and deaths will increase after that. The state reported 12,697 new COVID -19 cases Friday, the largest single day number, and there were 120 deaths.
“I’m not a gambling man,” Cuomo said toward the end of his briefing, immediately before offering to place $100 on two bets against a reporter. He said he’d wager that the Buffalo Bills will make the playoffs and that New York will not have to shut down from COVID -19.