Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) "It's pretty staggering," said Dr. Joseph Chow, Medical Director at Western New York Immediate Care, reacting to weekend statistics showing yellow cluster zones with higher Covid rates than in orange cluster zones.
While the 7 day rolling average for Erie County is about 7.5%, the 7 day rolling average for Erie County and Niagara County's yellow zone is over 9%
Related
According to New York State, a "Yellow Zone" area is a precautionary buffer to ensure COVID outbreak is not spreading into the broader community. The purpose of a Yellow Buffer Zone is to restrict some activity to help prevent further spread from Red and/or Orange Warning Zone area.
An "Orange Zone" area is a tighter buffer zone with more restrictions to prevent a COVID outbreak from spreading into a Red Zone, which is the most restrictive of the focus areas.
"These are numbers that we have not seen up to this point," said Dr. Chow. "Nine is popping. It's close to 10%. We've already eclipsed the 5% bar that we had been looking at," he said.
Chow worries about a surge upon a surge. "We won't know the fallout from
Thanksgiving gatherings for another week. And it is likely to collide with
the start of Christmas and Hanukkah gatherings. Let's hope the majority did the right thing and the transmission doesn't get any higher than this."
Governor Andrew Cuomo has said the most relevant fact right now is the hospitalization rate and hospital capacity, rather than the positivity rate. Dr. Chow agrees, adding, that there has been a significant change with hospital stays since the Spring. They've been cut in half; down to an average of 4 to 6 days, from 7-10 days six months ago.
"We're able to treat Coronavirus much more effectively and presumably we'll continue to get better at this. But you can still overwhelm a system with sheer numbers of people getting infected.