Cuomo Announces COVID-19 Winter Plan Amid Rising Test Rates

Cuomo Announces COVID-19 Winter Plan Amid Rising Test Rates: On Monday, November 30, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new five-point COVID-19 Winter Plan to limit the spread of the virus as New York State’s 7-day rolling average positive test rate ticked above 4% for the first time in months. The focus of the new plan is maintaining hospital capacity – with regional shutdowns back in the picture if hospital capacity approaches crisis levels. And keeping schools open, especially for grades K-8.

The key element of the Winter Plan is to shift the focus of the metrics used to identify Micro-Cluster Focus Zones to include hospitalization rates in addition to the positive test rates that are currently triggering restrictions in the state’s Yellow, Orange and Red Zones. The new Focus Zone benchmarks would factor in an area’s hospitalization rate, death rate, case rate, available hospital and ICU beds, staff and effective load management. All factors that were used in the state’s spring New York Forward Plan.

The other four strategies outlined in the Governor’s Winter Plan included expanding testing state wide especially for health care workers, nursing homes, schools, and essential workers. The plan will also detail expanded testing requirements in schools, continuing to limit small gatherings in private residences to no more than 10 people and implementing the state’s vaccination plan. The Governor did not detail new metrics on the state’s Micro-Cluster Focus Zone designations or new school testing levels as he said his administration would be looking at the extent of COVID-19 spikes caused by increased travel and socialization over the Thanksgiving weekend. Cuomo said it would take seven to 10 days to measure the “Thanksgiving effect”.

New York State’s positive test rate on Friday (3.98%) was the state’s highest rate since May 20 and significantly above its most current 7-day reported rolling average of 3.32%. Micro-cluster Focus Zones continue to drive the state’s metrics higher with positive test rates logging in at 5.65% on Friday while the state’s rate outside of the focus areas was 3.45%.

Westchester among state’s hardest hit counties

New York now has twenty-nine Focus Zones compared to twenty-one last week and twelve the week before. Including six in Westchester County – unchanged since last week. Positive Test Rates in the six Westchester Focus Zones range from 4.95% in Yonkers to 5.04% in New Rochelle, 6.14% in Peekskill, 7.34% in Port Chester, 7.37% in Tarrytown and 9.97% in Ossining.  Westchester’s positive test rate yesterday was 5.8% and the county’s 7-day rolling average is 4.7%. Nearby Putnam County’s positive test rate hit 6.7% with a 7-day rolling average of 6.5%. Only twelve of New York’s sixty-two counties have higher rates than Westchester. At its peak, New York’s positive test rate was 50% but dropped to just 1% by Labor Day. Nationally, the 7-day rolling average positive test rate is 9.4% according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The US positive test rate peaked at 21.9% in the spring and bottomed at 4.1% in June and 4% in October.

From governor.ny,gov