November 23, 2020
There is no reason to sugar-coat this. We are seeing a continuing rise in COVID infection, and it is a serious rise. …The numbers are not good.
— Westchester County Executive George Latimer
NY Update. This is more of an update than a full report, but given the depressing numbers for Westchester that were released today I thought it was important to pass them along and correct my overly-optimistic post from yesterday.
Today, the state reported that Westchester had 421 against 8343 tests, for a testing-positive rate of 5.05%. That’s the highest we’ve seen mid-May, back when we were doing far less testing.
Yesterday I thought that given the 7-day rolling average over the past two weeks, and especially the numbers over the prior 4 days, we had flattened out somewhat. I now suspect that perhaps there was a lag in reporting positive cases, but whatever the reason, with today’s numbers, our rolling average is up to 4.2%, which is an increase over last week:
So, we’ve still flattened out a bit, but with that 5.05% number today, I’m not confident at all that this will hold. It will be interesting to see the numbers over the next two days, at the start of a new work-week.
Lattimer’s briefing today was sobering. Here’s the link: https://www.pscp.tv/w/1nAKELPlrVAxL
Lattimer noted that 3 weeks ago there were about 1500 active cases in the county, but as of today we’re at 4800, so we have tripled our numbers in that short period of time. Similarly, we went from 50 hospitalized early in the month to about 170 now.
Cuomo today indicated that some portions of Westchester are potentially moving to orange or even red zones under the microcluster approach, including (portions of) Yonkers, Port Chester, and New Rochelle:
One piece of good news on the transparency front is that Lattimer said that the state is going to be providing additional data to the counties as to the micro-cluster zones, which the county is going to share publicly once they figure out how best to package it.
Edited to add: The numbers are rising in Pelham as well. As of today we have 19 active cases in the Village of Pelham, and 16 in Pelham Manor:
