The test positivity rate has fallen below 10% in New York State for the first time since Dec. 20, according to the state health department.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, speaking at Brookhaven National Lab Friday urged New Yorkers not to “take our foot off the gas” in the fight against the pandemic.
“Wash your hands, get the vaccine if you haven’t already, get the booster dose, and wear a mask,” she said.
During the briefing at the lab, Hochul said there is no set positivity-rate number that will trigger a change in the mask mandate for indoor public spaces.
“We’re going to be driven by data and look at what we what our situation was prior to the mandates and assess,” Hochul said.
The COVID test positivity rate and the number of new cases per 100,000 people continue to fall in Suffolk County and across the state.
The test percent-positive rate was just over 11% Friday and declining, according to data published by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. There were 96 cases per 100K. These numbers are about where they were a few days before Christmas but still much higher than right after Thanksgiving, when the winter holiday surge got started — and just before the omicron variant began circulating here.
COVID hospitalizations, daily new hospital admissions, patients in ICU and the number intubated in Suffolk are more than double what they were a month ago.
In the past month, 351 Suffolk residents have died of COVID-19, according to the published data.
In that time, 27,379 Suffolk residents completed their vaccine series increase, bringing the number of fully vaccinated Suffolk residents to 1,066,868 — 72% of the total population. In that time, according to the health department data.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Town of Riverhead has risen 56% over the past month to 7,728.
Confirmed positive cases in children ages 5-17 living in the Riverhead Central School District since Sept. 1 rose from 218 on Dec. 20 to 631 on Jan. 22.
– Alek Lewis contributed reporting
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