The COVID test’s positivity rate drops, but the outbreak in Suffolk remains severe

For the first time in 12 weeks, the COVID-19 testing’s positivity rates declined in Suffolk County this week.

The seven-day average positivity rate, which peaked at 10.7% in the week ending January 8, dropped to 8.9% this week (ended January 15).

The test positivity rate has been below 10% in Suffolk since January 8. “After months of drastic growth, it seems we are finally moving in a positive direction,” said Suffolk County CEO Steve Bellone.

The provincial government has urged residents to ‘keep up to limit gatherings, distance themselves from society and wear masks’.

Officials are hopeful that the holiday season is starting to flatten out.

The province is set to “get the vaccine in as many arms as possible as quickly as possible,” Bellone said.

‘Suffolk County is ready and ready to go. “We have an action plan and the infrastructure to vaccinate at least 6,500 individuals a day – we just need the vaccines,” he said.

This week, the pool of eligible recipients was significantly expanded by the CDC to include first responders, educators, grocery viewers in public, and people over the age of 65, meaning more than 7 million New Yorkers are eligible .

But the allocation of the vaccine dose from the state has not increased. Although the Agency for Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, announced this week that the agency will release the federal stock of vaccines, it appears that there is no federal vaccine supply for new doses. The federal agency took up its stock in December, an agency spokesman admitted.

Supplies of the two approved vaccines are expected to remain scarce for several months, officials said.

Elected President Joe Biden has said he will, if necessary, appeal to the Defense Production Act to increase the vaccine supply. But Biden said “things will get worse before things get better.”

The expansion of fitness, coupled with a shortage of supplies, has left thousands of anxious residents scrambling to make appointments, which has overwhelmed a New York State website.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said that appointments, based on the expected available vaccine dosages, were discussed quickly and that people now have to wait about 14 weeks to get their chance.

Cuomo and Bellone both urged residents to be patient.

12,173 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Suffolk County this week (January 9-15). Provincial health officials reported 682 new hospital admissions and 638 hospital discharges. An average of 823 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 this week. There were 113 new deaths, bringing the province’s total deaths in the pandemic to 2,604 people.

While test positivity in Suffolk declined, hospitalizations and deaths – left behind by infections – continued to rise nationwide.

In Riverhead, there were 186 new confirmed cases of the virus this week, compared to 257 new cases the previous week.

Riverhead Central School District reported 31 new cases among students and staff this week. New cases were reported in each of the district’s school buildings and in the transport department.

Amy Loeb, deputy executive director of the hospital, had 40 COVID inpatients at Peconic Bay Medical Center on Friday.

Testing of the positivity rates in Suffolk’s two micro-cluster focus zones dropped this week. The average test positivity in the Riverhead zone dropped to 10.5% this week, up from 12.2% the previous week. In the Hampton Bays zone, the testing average of this test dropped to 12.4% from 13.8% last week.

Public health officials are monitoring the spread of the British variant of the coronavirus, which they say is 50% more contagious. The New York Department of Health has so far confirmed 17 cases with the new strain, including two in Nassau County.

The CDC said this week that the British variant could be expected to become the predominant strain of the virus in the US sometime in March.

Health officials say there has been no evidence so far that the British variant is causing serious illness, and they believe the two approved vaccines will be effective against the new strain.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” Cuomo said this week. He described the situation as a ‘foot race’ between vaccinating the population and spreading new COVID cases, reinforced by the new virus strain now spreading in the US.

NY outbreak is one of the most severe in the US.

New York currently has one of the most severe outbreaks in the country.

According to CDC data, New York has 88 COVID cases per 100,000 people, a more serious outbreak than in all but five states: South Carolina (88 / 100k), Arkansas (89 / 100k), Oklahoma (95 / 100k), California 105 / 100k) and Arizona (122 / 100k). The national average is 69 COVID cases per 100,000 people.

Suffolk County currently has 119 cases per 100,000 people and Nassau County has 111 cases per 100,000 people.

If there are more than 25 cases per 100,000 people, the risk of infection is considered critical. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute, there are more than 75 cases per 100,000, the risk of infection is considered extreme.

The CDC reports 390,938 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as of January 16, with a moving average of seven days of 3,326 deaths per day, the highest since the onset of the pandemic.

According to CDC data, the virus has killed 1.2% of the U.S. population since the onset of the outbreak. According to modeling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the death toll in the US will exceed 566,000 by May 1st. The flu pandemic of 1918 killed some 675,000 Americans.

According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 has so far claimed more than 2 million lives worldwide. Nearly 1 million people worldwide will die from the disease by May 1, IHME projects.