NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Colleges in New York state that reach a certain threshold of active COVID-19 cases will have to shift to remote learning for two weeks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.
Any college that reports 100 active COVID-19 cases, or a number of cases equal to five percent of its on-campus population — whichever is less — will have to go remote for two weeks, with limited on-campus activity, Cuomo said in a teleconference Thursday morning.
During that two-week period, the college must suspend athletic and other extracurricular activities, and dining halls must become take-out only, he said. After two weeks, the school will "reassess" the situation in consultation with its local health department.
The new rule applies to "all types of in-person higher education institutions, including but not limited to community and junior colleges, universities, graduate and professional schools, medical schools, and technical schools," according to guidelines the state released Thursday afternoon.
"We're seeing around the country situations where colleges reopen and then have an outbreak of cases," Cuomo said. "We should anticipate clusters. When you have large congregations of people, anticipate a cluster, we know that."
The governor on Thursday also reported a new milestone for New York state: its 20th straight day with a COVID-19 positivity rate under 1 percent.
Of the 83,437 COVID-19 tests results that came back on Wednesday, 791, or 0.95 percent, were positive, he said. The state also reported four new COVID-19 deaths.
As of Wednesday, 490 people in the state were hospitalized with COVID-19, 126 of whom were in intensive care units and 52 of whom were on ventilators, he said.
Western New York, however, has seen a spike in its positivity rate, which currently stands at 2 percent, Cuomo said. The state will deploy a SWAT team from its health department to ramp up testing in cities including Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Lockport and Dunkirk in an effort to bring the region's infection rate down, he said.
"We're focusing on Western New York, and were going to continue to focus on it," he said.
Addressing weeks of speculation surrounding the return of indoor dining in New York City, Cuomo said the state would "make a determination at the appropriate time." The state has also yet to set a date for the reopening of casinos and movie theaters, he noted.
"We've said numerous times state law governs openings, reopenings, closings," he said. "And there are a number of areas where we're still calibrating the reopening."
