The Monroe County public health department said Friday that 119 people were in hospitals for COVID-19 treatment in the county. That’s the highest number yet recorded, and it breaks the record set one day earlier, when 109 people were hospitalized, according to the health department’s figures.
Monroe County and the rest of the Finger Lakes region began reopening parts of the economy Friday, with Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce CEO Bob Duffy saying the region just barely made the grade based on New York state’s criteria.
“The numbers came painfully close to us not reaching the metrics for phase one reopening,” Duffy said.
Duffy and county public health commissioner Dr. Michael Mendoza cautioned that the region could still fall back into a growing epidemic.
“We cannot reopen too quickly,” Mendoza said. “The major risk in reopening too quickly is that we undo all of the wonderful progress that we have achieved to date.”
Neither the state health department nor the governor’s office immediately responded to questions about whether the Finger Lakes region could continue reopening. Decreasing hospitalization rates or a low rate of new hospitalizations are part of the state’s criteria for reopening.
Monroe is one of nine counties in the Finger Lakes region, but it comprises more than half of its population and, Mendoza said Friday, about two-thirds of its COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Expanded testing capacity in Monroe County contributed to another record on Friday: The county recorded the highest-yet one-day increase in confirmed coronavirus cases. The health department said there were 94 new cases identified on Friday.
Those cases were in people ranging in age from under 10 to 90 or older.
Four more people died of COVID-19 in the county, the health department said, bringing the total death toll to 167.
