After a quiet June, 50 new cases were diagnosed in just three days at the beginning of this month. The unwelcome eruption in positive virus determinations led to swift expressions of concern in the social media. People were scared, and they had every right to be. The virus could easily get out of control. Perhaps it already had.
Governor Andrew Cuomo did it for New York State on March 7; county executive Pat Ryan did it for Ulster County on the 12th; and this Sunday, March 15, town supervisor Marybeth Majestic declared an official state of emergency for the town of Gardiner. On a local level, this might, for example, allow the municipality to purchase lifesaving equipment or supplies without waiting for the usual bidding process, in order to save precious time.
In a “tele-town hall” meeting conducted via phone and listened to by approximately 10,000 people, County Executive Pat Ryan and
I’ve been fielding a lot of e-mails and texts expressing concern for my family’s health this past week. I’ve also
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic is being felt in Ulster County, where two cases of the illness have been identified since Sunday, March 8.
Ulster County is ramping up efforts to combat the coronavirus after the first case of COVID-19 was reported on Sunday, March 8 in a local man who had recently returned from travel abroad. In response, the county has opened up its emergency operations center while public health officials begin the process of tracking the patient’s movements and determining who he may have come into contact with locally.
The author’s strange trip takes him from the edge of a fashion runway in Milan to a gurney in an emergency room in Albany, New York.
“I think it will come to Ulster County,” said HealthAlliance Hospitals’ CEO and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Michael Doyle. “We have to be prepared for that, but we will manage it.”
The Onteora school district is closely monitoring what’s happening with the novel coronavirus. In a second coronavirus-information letter sent home to parents on February 28, school-district superintendent Victoria McLaren said the county health department would notify the school district if any cases of Covid 19 were diagnosed and would “provide us with specific direction, which we will follow.”
The rapidly spreading novel coronavirus (Covid 19) is in some ways like the flu, but unfortunately it’s at least ten times more lethal to those who contract it. Influenza kills about one-tenth of one percent of people who get it. The death rate for cases of the novel coronavirus seems to be somewhere between one and two percent. We don’t know for sure because at the start of an outbreak the apparent mortality rate can be an overestimate if a lot of mild cases are being missed.