Cuomo asks NYers not to gather for Thanksgiving 

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As the Thanksgiving holiday week begins, New York State officials are recommending that dinners and other gatherings of family and friends be limited or even cancelled, to prevent a further rise in COVID-19 transmission.

And on Sunday, Governor Andrew Cuomo warned that several micro-clusters across the state, including some in the City of Rochester, could be headed toward orange zone status, which would bring additional restrictions on activity.

New York’s rate of the virus has been creeping up all fall, though the state is still at a significantly lower rate than most of the rest of the nation. On Saturday, 2.74 percent of all tests were positive, 30 people died of COVID-19, and 2,562 were in the hospital.

Monroe County officials on Sunday said they'd received 338 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, bringing the seven-day rolling average to 290 cases per day. The seven-day rolling average for the testing positivity rate was 3.52 percent.

Numbers released by the state on Sunday show the 7-day rolling average COVID-19 positivity rate in the yellow zone areas of Monroe County at 3.8 percent, down from 3.96 percent the day before.

During a news briefing Sunday, Cuomo didn't specify what parts of Rochester — which is currently a yellow zone — might become orange zones. He did note that the designation is triggered by an increase in the testing positivity rate to between 4 and 5 percent, and that it would trigger the closure of "high-risk non-essential" businesses, such as gyms and personal care. Schools would be required to go remote, though they could reopen after they do deep cleaning and test the students, he added.

Cuomo said the weeks between now and January 2nd are a “dangerous period” for New Yorkers, as pressure to participate in social interactions intensifies during the holiday season.

Cuomo, who has already limited indoor gatherings to ten people or fewer, said we’ll know by early December whether or not New Yorkers were careful over the Thanksgiving holiday and took precautions like mask wearing and safe social distancing.

“People get infected, you need an incubation period for the virus, they then start to get sick, they then start to show up at the hospital,” Cuomo said. So, Dec. 1-Dec. 10 you'll see the results of Thanksgiving weekend.

The governor said the winter holidays — Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year — are usually a period of “hyper social activity" and they will be another trigger point for spread of the virus. He added that safe behaviors can mean all the difference between a low or moderate trajectory of the virus, and a “terrible spike”, which he says will lead to more hospitalizations and deaths.

“I would not be shocked if they said on January 10th, January 15th we're up at 7, 8, 9, 10 percent," Cuomo said. "That could very easily happen if we are irresponsible. It could even be higher if we're irresponsible. It's purely a function of what we do.”

He said even though two major pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Moderna, are on track to produce doses of a reliable vaccine, it will at first be limited to the most vulnerable groups, and it will be at least another six months before enough people receive the vaccine to achieve “critical mass” and allow normal life to resume. And he says a future vaccine can’t do anything about rising rates of the virus right now.

Cuomo also warned that many regions of the state are headed toward more economic restrictions in the coming days, including portions of Manhattan, Staten Island, Long Island and Rochester and Syracuse, as the positivity rates in those regions are rising. But the governor did not declare any new zones or intensify any existing ones on Sunday.

Karen DeWitt is Albany correspondent for WXXI News. Randy Gorbman is the news director at WXXI News, a media partner of CITY.

Jeremy Moule is CITY's news editor. He can be reached at [email protected].