Albany County Executive Dan McCoy has warned that the percentage of residents testing positive for COVID-19 over a seven-day average has surpassed 3 percent, nearing the threshold where New York state imposes tighter restrictions. WAMC’s Jackie Orchard spoke with Albany County Health Commissioner Dr. Elizabeth Whalen about Thanksgiving, which is expected to cause a large spike in cases.
I have seen, you know, on the national news that a lot of people are avoiding travel recommendations that have been made. And people are not listening to the important message about the need to forego kind of Thanksgiving as we know it with large gatherings. With continued gatherings of large people, we are looking at definitely seeing more high rates of disease transmission. And of course, the biggest concern here is around hospital capacity becoming surged and more people becoming sick and even dying of COVID.
What is your role in relationship as far as coordinating with the hospitals and measuring their capacity? Have you been speaking with them? And are they prepared for a huge surge because of the holidays?
They are certainly aware of the potential for spikes, and they have plans in place, but every single system has its limits. And the public would be remiss to think that a large surge is something that will automatically -- they'll be available access for people. And we're seeing this in other parts of the country where hospitals have waiting rooms that are overflowing -- decisions have to be made about who is in the ICU. And this is what we really want to try to avoid.
We hear in these coronavirus update briefings with you and County Executive McCoy that the county keeps reporting positive cases with no clear source of infection. I know it's obviously a source of frustration for you. Do contact tracers think that people are not telling the truth, or is it possible people are being really careful and they're still getting COVID?
So it's a mix, I would say I would say a large portion of people that we talk to are telling the truth about their contacts. And not everyone knows that they've been exposed to COVID. That's a truthful thing, I would say a large proportion of people don't know that they were in contact with someone with COVID. And this is because a large amount of people who have COVID, and are young and healthy otherwise, can be spreading this and be asymptomatic, or people are spreading the disease before they become symptomatic. So for someone to say “I don't know where I got this,” that's not at all an unusual answer for us. And it certainly does not mean that they are not being truthful.
Our focus really is on making sure that we know who the case then has become in contact with so that we can reach out to them. Because those individuals need to have the warning so that they can be able to be in quarantine and not go on then to spread to others without being aware that they were exposed. So I think that's the most important piece is that our cases give us the important information of who they've been in contact with. That's how we prevent things from going forward.
What are the latest numbers in the county telling you as far as which age groups are most infected?
So we continue to see are the highest proportion of cases between 20 to 29 year olds. And I have to give it the caveat, I haven't looked at the data today. But I know historically that's been our highest number of people. We know that this is an age group where people are socializing and may be enjoying good health and not necessarily concerned about the effects of COVID. But we continue to see the burden of severe disease, ICU hospitalizations, and deaths in older individuals. And when we look at, you know times like Thanksgiving, where we know people are usually socializing in a multi-generational situation, this becomes really essential for people in that lower age group to take responsibility and not unwittingly expose other relatives to COVID.
Is asymptomatic spread still the biggest culprit?
I'd say it's a significant culprit, I'd say it is certainly significant -- and when you say “asymptomatic” you can say asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. This is a big concern because people can get COVID, not express symptoms, and two days before they develop symptoms, they're spreading disease. So when we reach out to people who have been infected with COVID, we say can you tell us who you were in contact with two days before your symptom onset occurred? Because we know that those are the individuals that are at risk of getting COVID. I think people also have a false sense of security in getting together with others for Thanksgiving and saying, “Well, I'm just going to test before I go to my Thanksgiving celebration. And then if I know I'm negative, I'll be safe.”
Let's do a Thanksgiving scenario. Be exposed on a Friday, test negative on a Monday, and then start to shed the virus on a Thursday (Thanksgiving) and then not even develop symptoms until the following Saturday. So we can't just test out of this. We can't just say, “I can go to Thanksgiving celebration because I had a negative test.” The only real strategy is either not to socialize or to quarantine before and make sure you don't have anyone you have been exposed to in the two weeks before you have the Thanksgiving celebration, which is difficult for a lot of people to do.
Are there any new developments in a vaccine distribution plan? What have you heard?
So this is something that we're very actively working on. And of course, vaccine preparation and how we implement large scale vaccination clinics is something else that we've been drilling on for years. We are starting to hear information and I don't think this is information we're hearing different from the general public: the vaccine could become available as soon as two to three weeks from now. And we know that there's going to be a tiered structure for vaccination, likely with health care workers and high risk individuals getting the first vaccination and then as supply increases it will be a phased approach to getting the vaccine out to the general public.
And who would have priority, say, in Albany County for the vaccine?
We don't have details on that. But from what I'm hearing, I think it would be our healthcare workers and first responders and our elderly nursing home residents would be among those considered for the first vaccine effort. But more detail will be coming on that.
