Leaders of Schenectady and Albany counties Tuesday urged their residents to wear masks in public regardless of vaccination status.
Both Schenectady Manager Rory Fluman and Albany County Executive Dan McCoy’s advisor Tuesday stops short of mandating mask-wearing for several reasons, including the inability to enforce it and the belief that the majority of the people in the county had moved on from the pandemic.
Regardless of public perception, hospitalization and infection numbers and deaths in recent weeks proved the region was not done with the pandemic, McCoy said. Albany County recently recorded nine coronavirus deaths in seven days. The county is on track to top the 20 deaths it saw in November.
Schenectady County’s deaths reported Tuesday were of a man in his 80s, a man and woman in their 70s, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 50s. It is unclear when they died, but the amount is a sobering reminder of the infection’s ongoing impact.
McCoy said he was asking private businesses to require masks of their employees and customers.
“Just because there isn’t a mandate doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing,” he said.
Albany County has seen a significant increase in daily cases over the last week, which McCoy said he believes was the result of a Thanksgiving surge.
McCoy expressed some frustration that other counties in the region were not offering the same message. He indicated he had conversations with county leaders on a larger joint advisory message, but it didn’t happen.
“We haven’t been able to do all that, to get everyone in sync to come up with same message,” he said.
McCoy also said he didn’t believe the county would pursue a vaccine mandate for private businesses similar to the one announced Monday by New York City, in part because adjacent counties wouldn’t impose their own.
“The only way new restrictions will work is if we do it on a regional-basis approach,” he said.
Fluman said he believed wearing a mask was a sign people were willing to do their part to help the public health fight against the disease.
“Wearing a mask is a good thing to do as an American citizen,” he said. “Listen, we’re still in this — we may be for years.”
McCoy said the county had one new coronavirus death to report, a man in his 40s. The county added 157 new cases; 10 more residents are hospitalized with COVID-19 for a total of 52 hospitalized. Of those, 11 are in the ICU, including a child.
Of the 52 people hospitalized, 71 percent are either not vaccinated or are only partially vaccinated.
Meanwhile, Warren County Health Services said a person in their 70s who lived at home before becoming ill going to a hospital died of the disease. The person was not vaccinated.