Full Notification

November is a quiet time in your Town parks, and an excellent time to enjoy the Town’s expanded hiking trails.  Hike Guilderland! is an application with interactive mapping of not only the Town’s hiking trail system, but also well-marked trails in Town maintained by the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, and Department of Environmental Conservation. 

COVID-19 remains a constant threat, with the community again with a high rate of community spread under CDC guidelines.  The CDC strongly recommends the wearing of facemasks in indoor public settings and on public transportation.  More details are below.

COVID-19 Weekly Update

Albany County DOH’s COVID-19 Dashboard reported two COVID-19 related deaths over the past week that increased the County’s pandemic death total to 591.  The number of hospitalized persons increased by six patients to 43 patients.  The County’s seven-day average of positive cases over the past week dropped from 8.9% to 7.3%.

For five consecutive weeks, the CDC has designated Albany County as a community with a “high” rate of COVID-19 spread.  Seven of the State’s 62 counties in the State (a decrease from ten last week) have a high community rate, including Rensselaer County.   There are now 73 counties in the nation at the high rate.  The CDC recommends wearing a facemask in indoor settings and on public transportation in counties with a high infection rate.  The wearing of facemasks in indoor public settings in Town facilities is strongly encouraged.  CDC updates its data on community spread on Thursday evenings.

The CDC reports that the percentage of the nation’s counties with a high community level increased from 1.43% to 2.27% and that the percentage at the medium level increased from 17.55% to 21.93%.  The percentage of counties at the low community level decreased from 81.02% to 75.8%.

State DOH’s method for assessing COVID-19 spread in a community uses a seven-day average of positive cases per 100,000 residents.  Albany County’s number decreased over the past week from 16.8 to 15.8 cases.  The State’s seven-day average increased from 19.1 to 19.9 positive cases.  The hospitalization rate slightly decreased in the State from 14.61 to 14.56 patients per 100,000.  State DOH reported that COVID-19 remains a deadly threat with 188 COVID-19 related deaths in the State last week, and that 75,044 residents have died since the start of the pandemic.

The CDC’s data shows that two Omicron variants, BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, continue to spread quickly and now account for 27.1% of the nation’s positive cases (an increase from 11.4% and 16.6% over the past two weeks) and 42.5% (an increase from 28.4 % and 19.6%) of the region that includes New York.  You can check on the availability of updated boosters by entering your zip code at vaccines.gov, texting your zip code to 438829, or calling 1-800-232-0233. 

At the local level, Town ambulances thankfully had no COVID-19 transports of residents in October and had only one transport in September.  For the pandemic’s duration, Town ambulances have transported 344 residents with confirmed COVID-19 cases to area hospitals. 

Please click here to read the full version of the weekly newsletter.

Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter. 

Peter G. Barber
Town Supervisor