ALBANY — For the second day in a row, from Thursday to Friday, there were 200-plus new cases of COVID-19 in the county bringing the total to 8,747 residents infected since the pandemic took hold this spring.
Also, the county broke a record of people in the hospital with 104, up four from yesterday, and the number in the ICU, 21, is also the highest ever, breaking a record of 19 set on Dec. 9.
On the plus side, on Friday, there were 175 people who tested positive for COVID and recovered bringing the total of recoveries to 7,110. There were 222 new cases from Wednesday to Thursday and 220 from Thursday to Friday. As of Friday, the five-day average for new daily positives was 195.8, up from 186.4 a day earlier.
The death toll stands at 188.
“These numbers are higher than we had nine months ago. We are almost there, we are almost out of this but it will take a few more months,” said County Executive Dan McCoy. “We still have to wear a mask and cough into your arm to clean your hands and keep your distance or we will reach critical mass and our hospitals will have issues with hospital beds and ICU beds and capacity issues like we see around the rest of the country.”
Dr. Nosa Aigbe Lebarty, CEO and chief medical officer at CentralMed Urgent and Primary Care said the vaccine is safe, in part because if does not inject a live virus into the body like some vaccines.
“What it does, once your body responds and identifies there is a foreign will create antibodies and it will attack the protein and stay there ready for another virus to come in,” he said. “This is a very safe vaccine and I will be taking one. Those of you out there, who are afraid of taking the vaccine there is nothing to be afraid of. This is the way to stop living the way we are living right now.”
