COVID-19 Statistics Update, October 27, 2020

OSWEGO COUNTY – According to the Oswego County Health Department, as of 3 p.m., there have been seven additional cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) since yesterday, and one more person in the county has died.

The cumulative reported number is 774 cases across the county and of those, 730 have recovered and five have died.

SUNY Oswego reported no new cases since yesterday.

“We are sad to report that we have lost one of our neighbors,” said Oswego County Public Health Director Jiancheng Huang. “This marks the fifth coronavirus-related death in our county. I would like to express our condolences to the family and friends of this person… As COVID-19 continues to spread across our county, we need to be cautious about increasing our activities,” he added. “Everyone must remain diligent in practicing prevention measures. Frequent hand-washing, face-masking and social distancing are the best tactics to help contain the spread of the coronavirus as well as seasonal influenza.”   

Oswego County Legislature Chairman James Weatherup briefed the public today in his weekly YouTube video. In today’s video, he discussed the micro-cluster strategy Governor Andrew Cuomo is implementing to monitor COVID-19 outbreaks and regulate activities.

He also said that sadly, another member of the Oswego County community has died due to the virus. On behalf of the county, Weatherup expressed his condolences to the person’s family and friends.

“Previously, the decisions on when a county could resume activities, such as indoor dining, were made on a regional level,” Weatherup said. “The numbers for all the counties in a region were considered when restrictions were implemented or lifted. Now, instead of using regional benchmarks, the state is looking at smaller focus areas to implement and adjust restrictions. This will involve a more targeted and detailed approach to pinpoint the center of an outbreak or a cluster. Instead of across the board shutdowns, restrictions will be focused on the center of the outbreak and surrounding buffer zones.”

Weatherup explained the state has already implemented this strategy downstate, where they are looking at positive testing rates, population and other data to control clusters of cases. He said restrictions on mass gatherings, dining, schools and businesses are triggered by infection rates and other data. Areas that meet those thresholds will be designated as red, orange or yellow zones.

Weatherup also said that counties are classified but their population density rather than geographic region.

Counties are broken up in four tiers. Oswego County is classified under Tier 3 because the population is more than 50,000 but less than 150,000.

Each of the four tiers has to meet separate criteria to be designated in a red (micro cluster), orange (warning) or yellow (precautionary) zone.

For Oswego County (and the other Tier 3 counties) to be designated in a yellow zone: Geographic area has 7-day rolling average positivity above 3.5% for 10 days AND Geographic area has 15 or more new daily cases per 100,000 residents on 7-day average.

For Oswego County to be designated in an orange zone: Geographic area has 7-day rolling average positivity above 4.5% for 10 days AND Geographic area has 15 or more new daily cases per 100,000 residents on 7-day average.

For Oswego County to be designated in a red zone: Geographic area has 7-day rolling average positivity above 5.5% for 10 days AND Geographic area has 15 or more new daily cases per 100,000 residents on 7-day average.

More information on this strategy can be found here.

“We hope it doesn’t come to that in Oswego County, but it seems like a more reasonable approach,” Weatherup said. “To put this in perspective, the positive test rate for the active COVID cases has been 1% or lower for the past several weeks. In the past two or three weeks, we have seen increase COVID-19 activities. Most of the positive cases were associated with small clusters in households, families or groups. The affected residents were mostly adults of varying ages and from communities of all sizes throughout the county.”

Weatherup said bottom line, everyone needs to continue to follow the guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus and protect the health and safety of the community.

Senior Public Health Educator Diane Oldenburg also discussed tips to protect children from lead poisoning, as this week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week.

Today’s statistics are below:

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