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Cuomo: WNY appears 'stabilized' with coronavirus cases

Mon, Sep 21st 2020 01:05 pm

Coronavirus stats for Sept. 21

Speaking to the press on Monday morning, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Western New York is making progress toward lowering its number of daily positive coronavirus cases. Throughout the summer, this region was among the highest in daily percentage, crossing 2% on several occasions. The governor has said the infection rate is manageable at 1% or lower.

“We've had the caution flag out. We have dispatched teams. We've worked very hard on the messaging around (safety protocols) compliance. We've stepped up efforts on bars, etc. We stepped up conversations with the colleges to do enforcement. And it appears to be having an effect,” Cuomo said.

He noted Western New York was at 1.6% Sunday, “and they've been under 2% for a couple of weeks. So, it appears to be stabilized. Right now.

“We would like to get it down further. But it's day by day, right? This whole situation has been day by day, stone to stone across the morass. You're only as good as your performance yesterday, right? You're only as good as your last win. So, it appears stabilized. We'd like to get it down. But we're going to keep the caution flag out, because it is higher than we would like to see it. We would like to see that number under 1. That's our ideal, is to be under 1. And we strive for our ideal, and that's under 1 and they're at 1.6.”

Cuomo rattled off the past few days’ numbers, which were 1.6%, 1.6%, .9%, 1.2%, 1.5%, 1.1%, 1.4% and 1.2%.

The governor in late August said Western New York's higher number of positive cases were due to “several clusters in Western New York. There was a steel plant in Erie County, a food processing factory, two nursing homes, people coming in for hospital procedures; a number of them have tested positive." In addition, Erie County colleges had dozens of positive cases at the start of this month.

Niagara County

The Niagara County Department of Health issued the following update Monday on positive COVID-19 cases in Niagara County:

Source: Niagara County “heat map”

Erie County

As of Sunday, Erie County had 43 new positive coronavirus cases out of 11,042 cases (0.39%). Friday’s stats revealed a yearly total of 10,786 confirmed COVID-19 cases (including 159 on Grand Island and 5,057 in the City of Buffalo). To date, 374,609 people have been tested (2.8% positive), with 690 deaths attributed to the coronavirus. Also, 85,793 people have taken an antibody test (6.7% positive).

Image courtesy of the Erie County “heat map”

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