Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a "military-style operation" to deliver 5.2 million Covid-19 tests to schools this week for children to bring home, including 375,430 for schools in Western New York.
Hochul also announced returning SUNY and community college students, when eligible, will need a booster shot and a negative Covid-19 test upon returning to campus, and that faculty now must be vaccinated.
The governor also extended for two weeks, to Feb. 1, her executive order requirement that businesses require customers to wear a mask or be vaccinated to enter indoor public places.
The plan for schools – part of Hochul's "Winter Surge 2.0" – comes as Western New Yorkers and the nation head into a third year coping with a virus that's in the throes of another surge with the Omicron variant.
"This is how we are going to ensure that these campuses stay open," Hochul said.
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The governor also said she expects higher education campuses to reopen no more than a week later than planned.
The governor, in a briefing from Albany, made her commitment to keeping public schools and SUNY and community colleges open as winter break nears an end.
She said 40 trucks and 86 state personnel were mobilized to distribute the tests to schools, with an additional 6 million to 7 million more tests expected in the coming days.
Hochul continued to stress, as she has repeatedly, the importance of getting vaccinated, boosted, wearing a mask and getting tested to stem Covid-19 infections.
Five million KN-95 masks have been shipped to counties for distribution, she said.
Hochul modeled how best to wear the mask, slipping her Buffalo Bills cloth mask over it for added protection.
She urged parents and caregivers of children ages 5 to 11 to get them vaccinated if they haven't already, noting only 28% of that age group has received shots since vaccines became available for them on Nov. 14.
Hochul cited a CDC report that said Covid-19 vaccines rarely led to problems in younger children while protecting them from a potentially life-threatening illness.
"Hundreds of thousands of children have been vaccinated, and vaccinated safely, she said.
Covid surges in Erie County
Hochul's announcement comes as Erie County, with 2,820 confirmed cases on Wednesday, set an all-time high in infections for the third day in a row.
On Thursday, Erie County had 2,443 new cases, according to County Executive Mark Poloncarz.
It has had 10,626 total cases over the past seven days, or 1,114 cases per 100,000 Erie County residents during the week.
The county's numbers are consistent with ballooning infection rates in other parts of the state.
Eleven other counties this week along with the five New York City boroughs had positivity rates of 20% or higher, led by the Bronx with nearly 28% and Orange County at 26%.
Ten of the counties experienced more than 2,000 new daily cases.
"The numbers are continuing to increase," Hochul said. "They don't have to and we can control this. It's within our reach."
At the same time, hospitalization rates, as well as deaths, are down. Western New York saw a 22% decrease over the past two weeks, consistent with downturns seen in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
"We are seeing more cases but not the correlating number of deaths," Hochul said, while still noting 80 deaths on Thursday alone, the overwhelming number of them unvaccinated people.
"If you are vaccinated, you have a very low chance of being hospitalized," the governor said. "That is why this situation is 100% preventable. It keeps coming back to this. The answer is right before our eyes."
Hochul said New York State is no different from what is happening through much of the country.
"The trend is identical," she said. "This is happening everywhere. We are being hit very hard but it is also a national phenomenon and a global phenomenon."
New York State is No. 3 in the country for per capital testing, and No. 1 among the larger states, according to data Hochul cited from Johns Hopkins University.
Hochul urged people who have not received their second vaccination shot to get it, and for people who have not received the booster to do so.
"This variant breaks through a first dose and even a second dose," Hochul said.
"You can be protected within two to three days of getting that booster shot," she said. That's incredible. That's all it takes."
Hochul said there are 1,800 test sites statewide, including at pharmacies, with more coming to Buffalo and five other cities.
The governor said she has asked the federal government to protect nursing home patients by requiring vaccines for visitors over the next two weeks and to make antiviral treatments and medicines more widely available.
She also urged more vaccinations and boosters for this vulnerable population, noting just under 90% are vaccinated and 73% boosted.
Fifty additional National Guard members are also being dispatched to assist in hospitals to join others with medical backgrounds already being deployed, the governor said.
Hochul also disclosed the number of hospitals that stopped nonessential elective surgery due to falling under a 10% bed capacity has dropped from 35 to 21 hospitals.
Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, the waterfront, culture and more. He's also a former arts editor at The News.
