Mohawk Valley, Central New York, and other Upstate regions have more flexibility in COVID reopening process By Luke Perry
Governor Cuomo released guidelines for reopening businesses on a regional basis, beginning May 15. “This is not a sustainable situation,” Cuomo explained, “close down everything, close down the economy, lock yourself in the home. You can do it for a short period of time, but you can’t do it forever.”
“The good news for upstate,” Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul told Keeler in the Morning (WIBX in Utica), is that “the Governor decided to breakout the downstate region from upstate . . . Because New York City and the surrounding counties have been so hard hit it wasn’t fair to hold back upstate New York and places like the Mohawk Valley. They are in a better place.”
Hochul recently visited with Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente and Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri. “I speak to the counties on a regular basis,” Kochul explained. “That’s one of the responsibilities I’m playing as Lieutenant Governor is to do that outreach.”
New York has experienced over 321,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 25,000 deaths. The state will use 10 business regions for the gradual reopening process.
“The Mohawk Valley” region consists of six counties (Fulton, Herkimer, Montgomery, Oneida, Otsego, Schoharie), and includes Utica and Rome. “Central New York” consists of five counties (Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, Oswego), and includes Syracuse.
Image from New York State
Each region is evaluated on metrics recommended by the Center for Disease Control. Hochul said decision making is fundamentally guided by the following questions: Have the number of new cases declined? What is your hospital capacity?
New York State’s specific metrics include:
-Regions must experience a 14 day decline in hospitalizations
-Regions must experience a decline in deaths on a 3 day rolling average
-Regions with few COVID cases cannot exceed 15 new total cases or 5 new deaths on a 3 day rolling average
-A region must have fewer than two new COVID patients admitted per 100,000 residents per day
Photo from Photo from Lt. Governor Hochul’s Office
The Governor announced that reopening of businesses will occur in four phases.
Phase One
-Construction
-Manufacturing and wholesale supply chain
-Select retail using curbside pickup only
Phase Two
-Professional services
-Finance and insurance
-Retail
-Administrative support
-Real estate and rental leasing
Phase Three
-Restaurants and food service
-Hotels and accommodations
Phase Four
-Arts, entertainment and recreation
-Education
Photo from Lt. Governor Hochul’s Office
Business “must develop a plan to protect employees and consumers, make the physical work space safer and implement processes that lower risk of infection in the business.”
This plan must include the following:
-Adjust workplace hours and shift design as necessary to reduce density in the workplace
-Enact social distancing protocols
-Restrict non-essential travel for employees
-Require all employees and customers to wear masks if in frequent contact with others
-Implement strict cleaning and sanitation standards
-Enact a continuous health screening process for individuals to enter the workplace
-Continue tracing, tracking and reporting of cases
-Develop liability processes
Regions will coordinate throughout the reopening process on providing vial services, such as education, transportation and public health. Regions must develop “regional control rooms” to monitor businesses and regional indicators, including hospital capacity and infection rates. Regions are encouraged to protect essential workers and “re-imagine” tele-medicine and tele-education.
Healthcare capacity is a primary consideration. Regions must have sufficient testing capacity (30 diagnostic tests for every 1,000 residents per month), hospital capacity (30 percent of hospital beds must be available after elective surgeries resume), and tracing capacity (30 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents). Regions “must use the collected data to track and trace the spread of the virus.”
In the Mohawk Valley, the rate of increase in confirmed COVID cases is “basically steady” over the past few weeks, 10 to 14 new cases per day, according to Dr. Kent Hall, Chief Physician Executive at the Mohawk Valley Health System.
“There is an awful lot of pent up demand to go out to do things and to get back to some degree of normalcy,” Hall explained. This is “a little scary” because “we’ve done a very good job of keeping this under control because of what we’ve been doing, and if we start loosening that up, then we’re going to see some increased cases.”
Hall said the Mohawk Valley has been “lucky” compared to downstate because “we have not had a huge number of cases,” nor has “our health system been overwhelmed,” so “we need to make sure we don’t get into that kind of situation.”
Luke Perry (@PolSciLukePerry) is Professor of Government at Utica College
