Cuomo Plans to ‘Attack The Clusters’ of COVID-19 in Hudson Valley

Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans to "aggressively target" clusters of COVID-19 after parts of the Hudson Valley reported the biggest spike of coronavirus in New York State.

On Tuesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he will meet with Orthodox Jewish leaders to address COVID-19 clusters in Orange and Rockland counties as well as the New York City area.

"I'm going to be meeting with religious leaders of the Orthodox community and local officials. If you look at those clusters and you look at those zip codes, you will see there's an overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities. That is a fact. I will be meeting with them to talk about it. This is a public health concern for their community. It's also a public health concern for surrounding communities. I've said from day one, these public health rules apply to every religion, atheists - it just applies to every citizen of the State of New York, period," Cuomo said.

On Monday, four Hudson Valley zip codes reported the highest rate of coronavirus in New York State. The Spring Valley area had a 30 percent positivity rate, the Monsey area 25 percent and the Monroe region was at 22 percent. The Suffern region reported 18 percent positive COVID-19 test results.

On Tuesday, the Orange County zip code of 10950 led New York State with 18 percent of tests coming back positive for COVID-19.

"We have seen hotspots before, but this is probably the largest cluster that we have addressed before, and the clusters are Brooklyn, Orange, Rockland. The activity in the cluster is very different than what's going on in the rest of the state. That's actually good news in some ways because you have effectively identified the genesis of the potential growth of the virus. Once you have the information, you aggressively target these clusters. These are embers that are starting to catch fire in dry grass. Send all the firefighting equipment and personnel to those embers and stamp out the embers right away. That's what this data does. Local governments are the first line of defense and they must respond. Competent government must do compliance and enforcement. A cluster today can be community spread tomorrow," Cuomo said.

The Governor also noted that 20 hotspot ZIP codes on Monday reported at least a 5% positivity rate. Areas that had high positivity rates will be subject of focused testing efforts including access to rapid testing machines, officials say.

Cuomo announced that Colorado has been added to New York State's COVID-19 travel advisory. Arizona and Virginia have been removed. The advisory requires individuals who have traveled to New York from areas with significant community spread to quarantine for 14 days. The quarantine applies to any person arriving from an area with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents over a 7-day rolling average or an area with a 10 percent or higher positivity rate over a 7-day rolling average.

The full, updated travel advisory list is below:

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