ALBANY, N.Y. (WROC) — On a conference call with the media on Monday, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave an update on the coronavirus cases across New York State and asked what the federal government’s plan is for the vaccine.
“New York has one of the lowest positivity rates in the nation. It depends on the day but we’re like the second or third lowest it depends on the day,” Cuomo said, listing off some of the higher infection rates of bigger states. Some of the data is as follows:
- Iowa: 50%
- Nevada: 37%
- South Dakota: 36%
- Utah: 15%
- Florida: 11%
- Indiana: 10%
- Montana: 10%
- Pennsylvania: 9%
“The positivity of the entire state with the red zone oversample 1.2%. As the red zones comes down, the differential between the over sample goes down, so its 1.1% without the red zones ,” Cuomo explained.
In those red zones — or zip codes with high cases — the positivity rate was 3.3.%, which is down from where it was earlier last week.
Of the 82,009 tests reported yesterday, 998 were positive:
- 14 New Yorkers died
- 934 hospitalized
- 198 in ICU
- 106 intubated
The infection rate for the regions throughout the state are as follows:
- New York City: 1.3%
- Capital Region: 1.1%
- Central New York: 1.1%
- Finger Lakes: 1.5%
- Long Island: 1%
- Mid-Hudson Valley: 1.4%
- Mohawk Valley: 1.3%
- Southern Tier: 1.3%
- Western New York: .9%
“Winter, will be the season of the vaccine we hope. We all hope and pray for the vaccine. the federal administration literally says when we have the vaccine that’s when its over. No, when we have the vaccine that’s only the beginning of the end. Once you have the vaccine step two is convincing the American people it’s safe which I think is going to be easier said than done.”
Cuomo said the National Governors Association — which he is the chair of — sent a letter to the White house with 35 questions on the distribution of the vaccine. The governor compared the task of administering the vaccine to the past challenge of testing across the state.
“Seven months, all hands on deck to get testing in place, every local department of health, every hospital, every clinic, every lab everyone doing everything they could to get ready to take tests,” Cuomo said. “Seven months how many tests did we do? 13 million. How many vaccines do we have to do? 20 million, and that’s if they only require 1 vaccine.
The United States of America has done 124 million tests. It has 328 million people. That’s only about one-third of the population in number of tests, In seven months, you tested a third in seven months. How long does it take you to vaccine 100%?”
via Rochester First