NEW YORK – One of the at-risk areas for COVID-19 cases in New York, within the so-called red zone, met the required metrics to switch to the orange zone, Governor Cuomo said Wednesday.
This is Orange County where the positivity rate went from 12 percent to 2 percent in three weeks and the rate of new daily hospital admissions leveled off, Cuomo said.
The governor also announced that counties, through their local health departments, will now be able to require mask-wearing orders to be extended at all times in the public and private schools in their jurisdictions.
“In terms of risk zone adjustments, Orange County has made very good progress,” Governor Cuomo said. “In Orange County we are going to change from the red zone to an orange zone.”
The governor said this is the only county that changes from red to orange, and the yellow areas remain the same color.
The governor noted that the positive test rate in all focus areas under the state’s at-risk zones strategy is 3.8 percent, and outside of the focus zone areas is 1.3 percent. A total of 129,660 test results were reported to New York State with 2,031 positives for an overall positivity rate of 1.5 percent.
