Buffalo, NY (WBEN) New York Governor Kathy Hochul says COVID is on the right trend, heading downward in cases.
But the governor says she's not ready to remove requirements such as social distancing and masks in public indoor places just yet.
Hochul says the trend is in the right direction. "The seven-day average cases is going down. "We have been waiting for this moment. We are finally trending the direction we want to go down, and that is downward," noted Hochul. "Statewide, we are at 28,296. That's a down from 90,000 since January 7th in the same month, we were at 90,000 new cases. That's a 66.6% drop in two weeks."
Hochul says for the first time since December 20th, New York's positive test rate is in the single digits, "but a lagging indicator is deaths and we still had 154 people we lost - lost their lives. And that is tragic," adds Hochul.
But she says she's not ready to lift restrictions. "We are not letting our foot off the pedal until we can declare that we are in a place where we can manage without all the restrictions we put in place. But until then we do believe that everything we're doing, continuing to keep socially distant, getting vaccinated, and wearing the mask is making a big difference," insists Hochul.
Hochul is deploying additional assets to nursing homes in the form of more military personnel. "We already had about 120 medically trained National Guard members in there," said Hochul. "Now we're deploying 88 nonmedical, because we just need the extra set of hands in our nursing homes to give out support to our frontline staff. That's starting very shortly. And we're going to rolling that out again, upstate as well. It's, again, just another reminder that this is not over."
WNY's positive test rate on Thursday is 17.65%.