COVID-19 Hospitalizations Up 185% in Hudson Valley in Last Month

COVID-19 related hospitalizations have nearly tripled in the past month in the Hudson Valley.

On Saturday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced 878 New Yorkers were hospitalized with COVID-19, that's about 60 more patients than reported on Sunday and the most since July 1, according to the state's COVID-19 dashboard.

Last week, Governor Cuomo closed schools and non-essential businesses in COVID-19 hot spots, or red zones, in part of Orange County, Rockland County, Queens, Brooklyn and Broome County.

In the Hudson Valley or Mid-Hudson Region as Gov. Cuomo labeled the area, COVID-19 related hospitalizations are also skyrocketing. As of this writing, the state's COVID-19 dashboard reports 111 Husdon Valley residents are in the hospital with COVID-19. The Mid-Hudson Region hasn't seen a total this high since June 22.

On Sept. 5, hospitals in the Mid-Hudson Region reported 39 COVID-19 related hospitalizations. The number of Hudson Valley residents hospitalized with the virus has nearly tripled and has increased by 185 percent, according to New York's COVID-19 dashboard.

On Sunday, 1.9 percent of COVID-19 tests in the Mid-Hudson Region came back positive. 3.51 percent of tests from the red-zone focus area of Orange County were positive while 12.9 percent of tests from the red-zone focus area in Rockland County came back positive.

"In New York our strategy is to identify micro-clusters. We do more testing than any other state, so we have more data. We also are obsessive about getting incoming case numbers from the hospitals. You map those cases and you find the greatest predominance of cases in a geographic area. That is a micro-cluster," Cuomo said. "We have an approximately 1 percent infection rate statewide, which is very low compared to other states. If we find an area where the rate is 2 percent, that's a micro-cluster. Three percent in a lot of states would be a safe zone - in New York, we consider it a micro-cluster. So we are doing very targeted analysis because we have so much testing capacity, and we will continue to let the data and science drive our approach to keeping the virus in check."