New York State’s Covid-19 caseload jumped this week to highs not seen since the late spring. But Western New York’s positive test rate – a key metric – remained steady, despite a slight upward drift in new cases over the past week.
That drift, which saw average daily new cases increase into the high 80s from the mid-to-high 70s a week ago, appears to be at least partly the product of increased testing in venues such as schools.
The five-county region is now reporting the results of 6,700 tests per day, on average, compared to 5,500 in late September. At the same time, Western New York’s average positive rate, or the share of tests that come back positive, held flat at between 1.2% and 1.4% every day for the past three weeks.
Those regional averages do disguise some local variation: Cattaraugus and Allegany counties, while small in absolute terms, are both seeing their highest caseloads of the pandemic so far. At 1.6%, Western New York’s one-day positive rate Monday was also higher than much of the state, which prompted Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to call the region a “hot spot” in remarks to reporters.
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But the seven-day positive rate, which corrects for daily variations in reporting and testing practices, is considered a more reliable figure by experts, including state health officials. And that figure has fallen markedly since the end of the state’s rapid-testing intervention in Western New York in early September.
These insights are part of an ongoing Buffalo News project to track and analyze critical daily Covid-19 metrics. Using data from the state and local county departments of health, as well as the state Department of Education and the New York Times’ national coronavirus database, The News is contextualizing and visualizing the still-unfolding story of Covid-19 in Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany counties.
The data suggest the pandemic is well-controlled in the region, despite rising case counts across much of the country and some of the state. Case numbers in Western New York ticked up sharply in late August and early September before peaking on Sept. 3 and then dropping back again.
Erie County, in particular, has reported an average of between 54 and 65 cases per day for each of the past seven days, even after an uptick at the University at Buffalo. UB reported 16 positive on-campus cases in the past week and 45 in the past two weeks, a marked increase from the first weeks of school. County officials have repeatedly warned that recent Covid-19 patients are skewing younger, many between the ages of 18 and 22.
At the elementary and secondary levels, 36 total on-site cases had, as of Tuesday, been reported in Erie and Niagara County public schools.
The picture is slightly more complex in some of Western New York’s less populous communities. Cattaraugus County, which has logged only 259 total cases since the start of the pandemic, reported 35 in the past week alone. Allegany County’s average positive rate also spiked to 1.7% this week after months below 1%, though caseloads are so small in both Southern Tier counties that they don’t alter the regional situation.
On the other hand, downstate outbreaks in parts of New York City – as well as Rockland and Orange counties to the city’s north – have added hundreds of cases to the state’s totals, pushing new daily case counts above 1,000 for six of the past seven days and prompting state official to announce new, localized lockdown measures.
Nationally, there have been an average of 44,280 new cases per day over the past week, according to the New York Times’ coronavirus database, a 6% increase from two weeks earlier.
Since Western New York recorded its first case of Covid-19 on March 14, more than 14,700 people have tested positive and 816 have died. As of Oct. 5, some 54 Covid-19 patients in Western New York were hospitalized.
