Twenty-one new cases of COVID-19 since Saturday afternoon were confirmed Sunday by the Monroe County Department of Public Health. And three more deaths related to the virus bring the county’s total to 194.
The most striking number from Sunday’s count: Seven women in their 20s were diagnosed. And 15 of the cases on the day are women, six are men.
After New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reported on Saturday that deaths from COVID-19 in the state had dropped to 84 the previous day – the first time since March that the daily numbers were below 100 – on Sunday Cuomo reported coronavirus-related fatalities had moved back up to 109.
The numbers come in the midst of a Memorial Day Weekend and fears expressed by many disease experts that relaxed social-distance guidelines across the country could lead to a spike in coronavirus numbers. President Donald Trump’s call for houses of worship to open immediately was also met with some resistance, including from church officials who expressed concerns that the close quarters of a church environment could facilitate the spread of COVID-19.
In this week’s “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” the Center For Disease Control and Preventioncited a case in which 92 people who attended events at an Arkansas church in March led to 35 people later being confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, with three people dying.
Besides the seven women in their 20s, Sunday’s Monroe County breakdown included two women and one man in their 30s; one woman in her 40s; one woman and one man in their 50s; one woman and one man in their 60s; one woman in her 70s; one woman and two men in their 80s; and one woman and one man in their 90s.
Of the 2,648 confirmed cases thus far, 176 people remain hospitalized, with 15 in the Intensive Care Unit on ventilators.
There are 1,377 people confirmed cases that have recovered from isolation, The total confirmed positive COVID-19 cases and known presumed positive COVID-19 cases brings the total to 1,634.
Monroe County’s three-day average of daily total tests – both polymerase chain reaction and antibody testing – is 1,036 per day. Monroe County has handled 33,626 PCR tests over the course of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jeff Spevak is WXXI’s Arts & Life editor and reporter. He can be reached at jspevak@wxxi.org.
