NEWS

Monroe County announces 148 new COVID-19 cases; much of county in NY's yellow zone

Staff reports
Democrat and Chronicle

New cases 

Monroe County announced 148 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Monday. This ends a streak of three straight days of record cases, topping out at 256 Sunday. 

New cases 

  • 1 female less than 10 years old
  • 1 male under 10 
  • 9 females between 10 and 19
  • 7 males between 10 and 19 
  • 13 females in their 20s
  • 27 males in their 20s
  • 17 females in their 30s
  • 14 males in their 30s
  • 9 females in their 40s
  • 7 males in their 40s
  • 9 females in their 50s
  • 8 males in their 50s
  • 7 females in their 60s
  • 4 males in their 60s
  • 6 females in their 70s
  • 3 males in their 70s
  • 1 female in her 80s
  • 2 males in their 80s
  • 3 females in their 90s

The 7-day rolling average of new cases is 158 new cases per day. The total number of COVID-19 cases to date is 8,507.

Deaths

There were 0 new deaths. The total is 307 to date.

Hospitalized

129 people in the Finger Lakes region are hospitalized, 22 of them are in ICU

Active cases 

There are 1,279 active confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Monroe County 

7-day rolling average positivity rate

The 7-day rolling average positivity rate for Monroe County is 3.63%

For more comprehensive data, please visit the Monroe County dashboard.

Parts of Monroe, Erie, Onondaga counties to be COVID yellow zones

The most heavily populated part of Monroe County was designated as a yellow zone under New York’s COVID-19 management strategy, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.

The change is a bid to halt rampant community transmission of the coronavirus. Much of it has come at private parties and other gatherings, Monroe County officials reiterated Monday.

Included in the new yellow zone are the city of Rochester and the towns of Greece, Irondequoit, Webster, Penfield, Perinton, East Rochester, Pittsford, Brighton, Henrietta, Chili and Gates. The municipalities are home to 88 percent of the county's population.

In that zone, the rules now are:

  • Indoor or outdoor gatherings of more than 25 are prohibited, except for essential gatherings. The previous limit, which some ignored, was 50 people at a gathering.
  • No more than four people may dine together in a restaurant at a single table
  • Houses of worship must limit attendance to 50 percent of capacity
  • Twenty percent of all in-school students and staff are to be tested for coronavirus each week. That will be about 15,000 tests weekly, said Dr. Michael Mendoza, Monroe County's public health commissioner.

All other coronavirus-related restrictions and guidelines remain the same.

Parts of Erie and Onondaga counties also were given the yellow designation Monday to address so-called microclusters of infection. Previously, portions of eight other New York counties had yellow zones, and three of them also had smaller areas designated orange, meaning tighter restrictions.

"The microcluster approach works," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday. "Do more testing, more targeting. As soon as you see any increase, be more aggressive. There’s nothing more you can do, but that’s everything that you can do." 

Positive test results on a 7-day rolling average in Erie, Monroe and Onondaga Counties were 4%, 3.4% and 2.6%, respectively, as of Sunday, according to state data. 

Mendoza said the new school sampling would be done using rapid testing kits supplied by the state and administered by school officials. While there has been almost no coronavirus transmission in schools, Mendoza said the new testing regimen will help provide better insight into the extent of community spread in Monroe.

He said a good deal of the frightening surge in COVID-19 cases in Monroe County is attributable to parties and private gatherings where people spend time in close quarters without masks.

Mendoza said many of the recent cases among younger people have been traced to parties on Halloween weekend. "Obviously that gives me great pause as we look ahead to Thanksgiving, which by every measure is … perhaps the most social gathering of the year," he said.

Enforcement of the new rules is difficult because so many of the problematic gatherings take place behind closed doors. At a news briefing Monday afternoon, Mendoza and County Executive Adam Bello urged people to call the county coronavirus hotline, (585) 753-5555 or email covid19@monroecounty.gov if they spot a flagrant violation of the rules. Bello said enforcement would be "redoubled."

Mendoza acknowledged, however, that the county has not levied any fines against hosts of gatherings in violation of the rules. 

"Have I thought about it? Absolutely. But the reality is … that’s not the first tool I pull out of the shed," he said. "We want to educate and give people the benefit of the doubt. You can't give people the benefit of the doubt too often, because these rules are not secret anymore. These guidelines have been in place for months. We are looking for people to do the right thing."

Local hospitals preparing for a surge

A spike in COVID admissions prompted Rochester Regional Health to suspend all general visitation to its hospitals and facilities, including Rochester General Hospital, Unity Hospital in Greece, UMMC in Batavia, Genesee County, and Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic in Clifton Springs, Ontario County. 

Newark-Wayne Community Hospital in Newark, Wayne County, stopped general visitations last week, an RRH spokesperson said.

"The pace of change could be signaling that we are in for another significant wave of illness," said Dr. Robert Mayo, RRH's Chief Medical Officer. "We want to do all we can to minimize the impact on our patients and our care teams."

Mayo said the healthcare system was better prepared to handle a surge now than it was in the spring, where the number of cases spiked before there was a chance to prepare.

"We do have COVID isolation units now," Mayo said, "and we have more than enough PPE (personal protective equipment)."

UR Medicine, the region's other major healthcare system, announced Monday that it was not seeing the level of COVID admissions that would necessitate visitor restrictions at its facilities. But they cautioned that may change.

"Because this is a rapidly changing situation, we may need to limit visitation further if cases continue to rise," a spokesperson said Monday morning. "We ask members of the public to check each hospital’s website before visiting."

The different responses from RRH and URMC don't reflect disagreements in the approach to protecting staff and patients, but simply a differing number of cases each has seen in recent days.

"There is a variation between hospitals," Mayo said. "RGH and Unity have particularly high numbers of patients admitted with COVID and UR's are a bit less.  But we remain in lockstep in the way we are addressing the pandemic. We are communicating daily." 

Promising news on possible vaccine 

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer released early study results Monday indicating that their vaccine prevented more than 90% of infections with the virus that causes COVID-19.

Dr. Edward Walsh, an infectious disease specialist with Rochester Regional Health says the report is remarkably good news.

“It’s unusual for a vaccine trial to be effective in first go around.  More often we’ll have one that is only moderately effective, so to see something like this is unusual,” Walsh said.

More than 30,000 people have been participating in trials of this vaccine worldwide, including about 200 in the Rochester area.

Walsh cautioned that many questions remain, particularly about how long the vaccine might give an individual immunity. And once approved by the FDA, there are many questions about how quickly the vaccine could be manufactured and distributed.

“One of the issues is the necessity at this stage to keep it at very cold temps,” Walsh said, explaining that doses of the vaccine need to be transported and stored at minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit (-80º Celsius).

“Hospitals have these freezers, but physicians’ offices do not and my guess is that most pharmacies don't, either," Walsh said. “It will create a challenge, but it’s not insurmountable.”

Walsh said it seemed likely people would need to travel to a hospital to receive both doses of the vaccine, which are supposed to be given 21 days apart.

Logistical issues aside, Walsh expects a tiered approach with high-risk patients and healthcare workers being vaccinated first.  It would likely take many more months to immunize everybody in the Rochester region.

“If we can stall the pandemic long enough to bring a vaccine like this and some of the others that are currently in trials through to a conclusion where we are confident that they are effective and safe, it will be very gratifying,” Walsh said.

In the meantime, he said, it’s important that people not let their guard down and continue to practice preventative measures, including social distancing, wearing masks, and frequent hand washing.

No immediate plans for Winter school sports in New York

ALBANY - With growing COVID cases in New York, state officials said Monday they are less likely to allow indoor winter youth sports, such as basketball, hockey and wrestling.

New York has yet to announce any official decision on winter sports, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his top aides doubted whether the teams will be able to convene later this month as the youth leagues had hoped.

"As we’re seeing the inclines in different parts of the state, we’re not inclined to go ahead with opening the winter sports at this time," Robert Mujica, the state budget director, who is helping to oversee any opening plans, said on a conference call with reporters.

"We’re continuing to look at those numbers, but the numbers right now don’t indicate we are going to expand them right now."