ALBANY — Three county residents died of COVId-19 over the weekend bringing the death toll to 392 since the pandemic took hold in March, 2020.
From Saturday to Sunday, a man in his 50s and a man in his 60s died and on Sunday, a woman in her 70s died from the virus, said County Executive Dan McCoy.
The number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to increase across the country and around the globe. Officials have attributed the spikes to a delta variant of the virus that is more contagious but a slight majority of those who have gotten seriously ill recently are those that have not been vaccinated.
“COVID isn’t done with us yet, and we still need to do more to get more people vaccinated, despite having now hit the major milestone of an 80 percent first dose vaccination rate for our adult population,” said McCoy. “And until then, I continue to strongly urge everyone to wear masks in public places, because we know the delta variant can still be spread by those who are vaccinated,” he continued.
From Sunday, Aug. 22 to Sunday, Aug. 29 the county saw 512 new cases of COVID-19 for a total of 26,481 since the pandemic began. The five-day average of new cases spiked from 68.2 to 84.4 percent over the past week and the number of active cases increased from 393 to 472. On Aug. 29, there were 26 county residents hospitalized with eight in the ICU.
On the plus side, as of Aug. 29, 69.2 percent of the county population received at least the first dose of the vaccine while 63.6 percent are fully vaccinated. Of those 18 years and older, 80.1 percent have gotten at least the first shot.
In the eight-county Capital Region, 67 percent of the population got at least the first shot while 59.8 are fully vaccinated. Of those 18 and older, 79.4 percent got the first shot and 71.4 percent are fully vaccinated.
