Confusion surrounding numbers and reopening criteria for Capital Region

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The Capital Region is not among the regions reopening on Friday. County Executives told NEWS10 ABC there is still a lot of confusion and many unanswered questions when it comes to numbers and meeting the criteria.

Both Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin and Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said the numbers they are recording for hospitalizations do not match the number the state is providing.

“Uh, you told us we took a step back on data that’s wrong? What are you doing?” said McLaughlin. “If the Governor and his people learn to count, we’d be opening now.”

“This isn’t just a topic in our control room. I’ve talked to every county executive pretty much across the state of New York and county managers and everyone’s been arguing about the same thing: Where are you getting these numbers? How are you calculating? Trust me, Dr. Whalen and I look at the hospitalization rate every morning; we go through every hospital and we check and re-check,” said McCoy

Additionally, McLaughlin said nursing homes are a huge contributing factor to the numbers, which he feels is not fair.

“If [the state] recognizes that they’ve got to make an adjustment here for nursing home situations, we’re good to go,” said McLaughlin.

McLaughlin said the state also needs to be more careful about counting patients from out of the area just because they’re being treated at one of our hospitals.

“How do you count a New York City resident that got flown up here in my data? It’s beyond absurd,” said McLaughlin. 

“It’s also still not exactly clear if we fall back if we would have to re-start the 14-day clock or if we need to have a three-day rolling average in order to satisfy the metric,” McLaughlin continued. “They’re totally wrong on even their own metrics, because if you read the chart, it says three day rolling average, but then Malatras says, and he stands by it, oh no, no, it’s 14 days. It has to be fourteen days. That’s ridiculous.”

McLaughlin argues Rensselaer County is stable enough to reopen, adding that they have a less than 1% infection rate.

“I just need phase one. I’ve got to get phase one by Monday or Tuesday of next week. We’ve got to get going,” he said.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said they submitted their county’s reopening plan to the control room on Friday and the specifics will be released to the public on Saturday.