CATSKILL — Greene County recorded new 2022 COVID-19 lows Monday, with the Greene County Public Health Department identifying 85 active positive cases in the county.
That figure represents the lowest total since 86 cases were recorded last Aug. 31.
“I think we’re winding down to the point where it’s mutated to the point where it’s the flu,” Greene County Administrator Shaun Groden said. “The people who seem to be having the most physical trouble with it are your seniors and people with comorbid issues. That seems to be the pattern. The pattern certainly seems to be that the fatalities are among seniors who already have issues.”
The health department identified 46 new COVID cases over the weekend, bringing the county’s total caseload to 9,740 since the pandemic began in March 2020.
There are currently 11 Greene County residents hospitalized due to COVID-related illnesses, a quarter of the yearly high of 44 recorded on Jan. 6.
The health department currently has no COVID testing clinics on the books, as virus numbers have receded and at-home test kids have become more widely available to residents.
The agency had previously hosted twice-weekly testing clinics in Coxsackie at 370 Mansion St.
Groden said the county could restart the clinics if the COVID numbers begin to rise again.
“I could arrange a testing pod probably within 48 hours’ notice,” he said. “We have the facility and we have the testing kits. Then we have such a distribution of kits at home and there’s all sorts of testing kits for school kids that just seem to have a cold. You can test them real quick and send them back to class, which is the whole purpose of the stay-in-school initiative.”
The county recorded no new COVID-related deaths over the weekend, with the county’s total of COVID deaths at 114 since the start of the pandemic.
Groden noted that COVID cases within the senior community could be tied to a decision then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made early in the pandemic to bar nursing homes from accepting residents with COVID-19 in order to clear up space in New York hospitals.
“I think that really goes back to Cuomo’s decision to push people back into nursing homes,” Groden said.“Look what happened. They’re frail to begin with and then typically they have some kind of other underlying issue where their defenses are weakened anyway. It’s different than kids or young adults.”
As of Feb. 12, the total percentage of COVID tests in the county that returned positive results stood at 4.7%, with a seven-day rolling positive rate of 5.6% in the county.