Call it Covid-19 whiplash.
A week ago, the biggest question surrounding the local impact of the virus was whether parts of Erie County would be moving into a "red zone" designation, prompting a shutdown of all non-essential businesses.
But with the county and Western New York showing multiple days of decline or relatively flat hospitalization levels, optimism has started sprouting that maybe Erie County could change back from the current "orange zone" designation to the less-restrictive "yellow zone" category in a few weeks.
"Hopefully, we'll get down into the yellow zone soon, but we still might be a couple of weeks away," County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz said Thursday. "I think we've gotten through the Thanksgiving bump. There are other areas in New York State that are doing worse than we are right now. So let's just keep heading on the trend that we are."
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Erie County has shown five consecutive days of either declining or relatively level hospitalization rates, though the numbers are still elevated compared with the spring.
The numbers for the Western New York region also echoed the positive trend lines. The number of patients hospitalized due to Covid-19 in the five-county region decreased Wednesday, dropping from 527 to 501.
The region's hospitalizations have fallen slowly but steadily in the past week, following a similarly paced decline in the region's coronavirus positivity rate.
The number of patients hospitalized due to Covid-19 in the five-county region decreased by 26 on Wednesday, dropping from 527 to 501.
The region's seven-day average positive test rate also continued to fall, with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announcing Thursday that Western New York was at 6.6%, the lowest it has been since Nov. 27.
"We saw Western New York going up for a long period of time," Cuomo said. "People got the word out. They took it seriously. We're now seeing a flattening of that increase, and that's good news."
In another piece of good news, Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein told the County Legislature on Thursday that the county now has 98 contact tracers available to investigate positive Covid-19 cases. The increase has eliminated the Health Department's case investigation backlog. County tracers are now able to follow up on positive test reports and identify close contacts within a few days.
But there is still some bad news:
• Poloncarz announced that the county has just crossed the 1,000 mark for Covid-19 related deaths. Another 25 individuals were reported to have died since the county's last briefing Monday, bringing the total to 1,001.
• Serious Covid-19 cases requiring intensive care or ventilator assistance were a little higher than normal as of Tuesday, the date of the most recent data released.
• And projection models from the University at Buffalo indicate that if little else changes – and despite the latest good news – hospitalizations may continue to rise at a slower-but-steady rate until plateauing sometime in January.
It is not nearly as severe as the catastrophic job losses that the region suffered during the first wave, but over the past three weeks, nearly 15,400 local workers have lost their jobs.
That makes it hard to imagine that Erie County would quickly transition to a yellow zone that would permit, among other things, the reopening of indoor dining at restaurants.
Given the hospital projections and the coming Christmas and New Year's holidays, Poloncarz said it is unlikely that any zone changes would be made before January.
"I'd be shocked if that happened in the next week or two, just because of the Christmas holiday and the worry about what that might bring," he said.
Poloncarz said the state incorrectly sent Pfizer vaccines meant for Erie County Medical Center to two other hospitals – Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital in Amherst and Olean General Hospital in Cattaraugus County.
He later tweeted that after speaking with Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, that problem has been resolved and ECMC staff will be able to finally begin getting vaccinated Friday.
He also said that while the Catholic Health system serves as the state's vaccine distribution hub for Western New York, the Erie County Vaccine Task Force will partner with Catholic Health and still play a major role in ensuring that the vaccine gets administered to the general public when the time comes months from now.
"They're not going to be the only provider of the vaccine," he said, referring to Catholic Health.
On Thursday, Erie County surpassed the grim milestone of 1,000 such deaths due to Covid-19. That's how the story of this virus often is told – in numbers. But the human story is so much more painful.
Poloncarz also elaborated on the 1,001 Covid-19 related deaths in Erie County. He said about 3% of all confirmed county cases are resulting in fatalities.
At the start of the local health crisis, he had a worst-case projection on his desk that indicated as many as 6,000 county residents could die from the virus. But as the numbers declined over the summer, he was more optimistic that the worst of the death toll was behind Erie County.
Nevertheless, before this region gets herd immunity through widespread vaccination, Poloncarz said basic math suggests many more people will die.
"There's someone who's probably watching this right now, who is not Covid-19 positive, who will catch the illness and probably die before they can get a vaccine," he said. "The statistics just say that is the case. So let's do what we can as a community to ensure that we protect as many people as possible from getting sick in the first place. Because if we can protect them from getting Covid-19, catching the coronavirus, we can keep them alive."
News Staff Reporter Keith McShea contributed to this story.
