BUFFALO (WBEN) - "I think a lot of businesses and people should be worried because the numbers are significantly higher than we hoped they'd be at this time when we talked about this last week."
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz and Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein held another virtual press conference Monday afternoon, again expressing their concern regarding COVID-19 rates in the county.
Last week, much of the county moved into a yellow zone, meaning minimal restrictions such as bars and restaurants closing earlier and schools having to test 20% of their in-person population, but there's growing worry from residents that the county could soon enter an orange or even a red zone designation, meaning even more restrictions in the affected areas.
However, Poloncarz believes orange and red zone designations would be applied to smaller pockets of higher numbers as opposed to an entire community.
"If we go orange or red, and I think there is a chance that portions of our community will go orange and maybe even red, I do not expect it to be the whole community, I expect it to be particular regions of serious concern," he said.
"If you look at the other cluster zones across New York State, there's usually a very large yellow zone and then a smaller orange and maybe even a smaller red, so I would not be surprised if a statement from the state comes out that says 'these are the areas that are moving into orange, and these are the ones that are the ones that are moving into red,'" said Poloncarz. "If you look at the cluster zone strategy, it's to pinpoint in a narrow area the micro-outbreaks - but our problem is we don't have micro-outbreaks, we have macro-outbreaks, but there are some areas that are doing better than others."
The Erie County Department of Health tweeted out some of the COVID metrics per zip code to show which areas within Erie County are doing the worst.
From our live video update today, here is our data set of Erie County ZIP codes, COVID cases reported week ending 11/14, & new cases per 100K population.
— Erie County Department of Health 😷 (@ECDOH) November 16, 2020
This is preliminary data and subject to change.
Source: ECDOH, Office of Epidemiology
ZIPs with <5 cases not included pic.twitter.com/wN3pdbiAGT
When asked about the specific data that will be used to determine whether or not certain areas need to go into orange or red zones, the county executive cited zip code data, as well as new daily cases per 100,000 on a seven-day average.
"There is no one driving factor, but new cases are going to be seriously considered as it pertains to the percentage of the population," said Poloncarz. "If we go orange or red, and I think there is a chance that portions of our community will go orange and maybe even red, I do not expect it to be the whole community, I expect it to be particular regions of serious concern."
