NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- New York state's COVID positivity rate has dropped below 1% for the first time since Sept. 24, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday as the state continues to focus on hotspot areas.
Cuomo said the positivity rate for the entire state—including the hotspots—was 0.96% on Saturday, the first time it has dropped below 1% since Sept. 24.
The "red zone" focus areas had a positivity rate of 5.74% on Saturday and a positivity rate of 6.13% over the past week, the governor said.
The state's positivity rate excluding the red zones is 0.84%.
The red zones—which include parts of Brooklyn and Queens, as well as areas in Rockland and Orange counties—are home to 2.8% of the state's population but made up 17.6% of all positive cases reported this week.
"We're dealing with a very specific situation, which is the clusters. Overall the state is doing very well," Cuomo said Sunday.
The governor also announced that the state has conducted 12 million COVID tests since the pandemic began.
"We have a sophisticated testing mechanism where we take, now, more tests per day than most states take per week," the governor said. "That allows us to do a very granular analysis. Most states don't have that capacity or don't have that desire."
Cuomo said the state is using its testing capacity to track clusters in about 2% or 3% of the population.
"Attacking a cluster is much easier than trying to attack a statewide increasing rate," the governor said.
There were 170 new cases in the red zones on Saturday and 973 new cases in the rest of the state for a total of 1,143 new cases, a drop from the 1,447 new cases reported Friday.
Total hospitalizations also dropped from 826 on Friday to 820 on Saturday. Friday's number of hospitalizations was the highest in the state since July 15.
Of those hospitalized Saturday, 186 were in the ICU, an increase of seven patients from Friday, and 84 required intubation, an increase of 3 patients from Friday.
The state also reported five more deaths from the coronavirus, including one person in the Bronx and another person in Queens.
The state's total number of cases is now 474,286, while the death toll is 25,574.
