‘Steady uptick’ in COVID cases & hospitalizations in Suffolk concern local health officials

There has been a “steady uptick” in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and COVID-19 hospitalizations in Suffolk County, where the number of confirmed cases passed the 50,000 mark yesterday.

The county’s positive test rate averaged nearly 1.5% over the past week, County Executive Steve Bellone said during a press briefing yesterday. The county’s positivity rate had been “below 1% for months,” Bellone said, but has been above 1% since Oct. 21.

New York State as a whole has seen its positivity rate creep up in recent weeks. Also under 1% for months, the state has averaged 1.6% over the past week and was 1.8% on Tuesday, due in part to localized outbreaks the state has labeled “micro-clusters” and sought to control with location-specific restrictions.

“A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who haven’t been tested yet,” according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professors Dr. David Dowdy, and Dr. Gypsyamber D’Souza. The positivity rate is a critical measure because it indicates how widespread infection is in the area where the testing is occurring. If an area reaches a 5% positivity rate, lockdown measures are required to control the virus.

Coronavirus coverage, maps & cases by town

A record 100,000 new cases were reported yesterday in the U.S., where the virus is surging in at least 23 states. Deaths related to the coronavirus, which lag behind case reports, increased 21% in the U.S. in the last two weeks.

“The numbers ticking up are a concern in the context of where we are, with the cold weather and winter approaching, the virus surging in other parts of the country and around the world,” Bellone said yesterday.

“We remain focused on that: keeping people healthy, keeping these numbers down and enabling our economic recovery to continue,” Bellone said. “We cannot afford to slide back.”

COVID hospitalizations in Suffolk at highest since region entered phase four

Hospitalizations in Suffolk, which were averaging about 20 people on a daily basis, are now “back up into the 40s on a regular basis now.” Yesterday, 55 people were hospitalized with the disease in Suffolk — the highest number of COVID hospitalizations in the county since the Long Island region entered phase four of reopening on July 8. Suffolk’s hospitalizations, which peaked at 1,658 on April 11, has been below 100 since June 21.

More than 52,000 people were hospitalized with the disease across the U.S. yesterday, the highest number since the second peak of the U.S. outbreak that occurred this summer, when daily hospitalizations climbed to 59,712 people — about the same number as the peak this spring.

The County Department of Health is currently monitoring two new clusters of cases in eastern Suffolk, Bellone said yesterday.

Southampton early-voting site at center of new coronavirus cluster

Once cluster involves an early-voting polling location in Southampton. The early-voting site on the Southampton Campus of Stony Brook University has been linked to 10 positive COVID-19 cases so far, Bellone said. All 10 people are in isolation, he said. In addition, 48 contacts associated with that polling place are currently under quarantine. The site was the only early-voting site in Southampton Town. The outbreak affected six poll workers and four personal contacts. The county heath department advises anyone who voted at that location from Oct. 26 to Oct. 28 to monitor their overall health for COVID symptoms and contact their health care practitioner if they become symptomatic.

The other cluster centers on a 32-person gathering with students at Shoreham Wading River High School, Bellone said.

The Shoreham-Wading River School District learned of on Wednesday, Oct. 28 that three students who had attended a weekend social gathering of students had tested positive for the virus, according to a letter to parents issued by SWR Superintendent Gerald Poole. The high school will be closed for in-person instruction through Nov. 11 due to a large number of students and instructional staff told by health officials to quarantine.

Even though the gathering size did not exceed the 50-person limit set by the state, if “the proper precautions aren’t taken and to a certain extent, even if they are, you can end up in a situation like this,” Bellone said.

Confirmed COVID cases in the East End towns have recently been growing more rapidly than in the five more densely populated western Suffolk towns, though the total infections on the East End remain far lower.

In the past week, the number of confirmed cases in Riverhead grew by 4.5% to 911. In Southampton, cases increased 4.9% to 1,392. Southold cases rose by 4.5% to 469. East Hampton’s positive cases rose 10.8% to 309.

Islip (14,593 cases), Babylon (8,064 cases) and Huntington (6284 cases) had case increases of under 2% in the past week, while Brookhaven (12,021 cases) and Smithtown (3,201 cases) increased by 2.4%.