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The day before Thanksgiving is typically the busiest travel day of the year. But it won’t look nearly as busy this year. AAA reports the pandemic is taking a big bite out of Thanksgiving travel plans. The travel organization expects the biggest one year-decrease in Thanksgiving travel ever.

A new poll finds the presidential election is not settled yet for some New Yorkers. Three weeks after Election Day, 20% of respondents say it’s too early to tell who actually won.

Orange zone restrictions are set to take effect in Syracuse on Wednesday. That means gyms and hair salons must close and restaurants can only do takeout and outdoor dining. It’s another hit for certain industries that have been struggling particularly hard throughout the pandemic.

Randy Sabourin is the owner of the Metro Fitness clubs in Syracuse and Fayetteville. They were already closed for about six months this year. Now, facing the closure of at least his Syracuse location, he said it gets more difficult to convince people that going to the gym is safe.

Democrats who lead the state Senate announced Monday that they have won enough seats to hold a supermajority. That means they can override vetoes by the governor and potentially change the balance of power at the State Capitol.

After wading through an unprecedented number of absentee ballots cast in the Nov. 3 elections, several Democratic candidates in the Senate have pulled ahead of their Republican opponents and have declared victory.

Onondaga County is navigating a complicated combination of state regulations because of increases in COVID-19 cases. The state-designated yellow zone has changed, and parts of the city of Syracuse and some other towns have advanced to the more serious orange designation.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo intensified restrictions in several parts of New York on Monday as the coronavirus infection rate climbs. He also delivered a stern warning to New Yorkers who are tempted to break the rules during the holiday season, saying careless behavior will lead to more deaths.

Cuomo designated parts of upper Manhattan and portions of Long Island as yellow zones. On Staten Island, which is now an orange zone, hospital space is running out, and the state will reactivate and emergency health facility there which was created last spring.

Onondaga County officials announced another 202 positive cases of the coronavirus Sunday, with 102 residents currently hospitalized. There’s one big concern as hospitalizations related to the coronavirus, have reached their highest numbers since the pandemic hit central New York.

Upstate University Hospital CEO Dr. Robert Corona said there are enough beds for COVID-19 patients. The facility has long had plans for creating space. The thing that worries him at this point is whether there is enough staff to take care of them.

As the Thanksgiving holiday week begins, New York officials are recommending that dinners and other gatherings of family and friends be limited or even canceled, to prevent a further rise in COVID-19 transmission.

New York’s rate of the virus has been creeping up through the fall, though the state is still at a significantly lower rate than most of the nation. 2.74% of all tests were positive on Saturday, and 30 people died of the disease, and 2,562 were in the hospital.

The incoming Biden administration is expected to usher in many changes, both in the U.S. and abroad. 

This week, Grant Reeher speaks with James Steinberg, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the Obama administration, and Deputy National Security Advisor under President Clinton. Steinberg currently serves as University Professor of Social Science, International Affiars and Law at Syracuse University. 

The Salvation Army’s annual Christmas Bureau distribution of toys and food to low-income families in Syracuse will look a little different this year, due to the pandemic. The organization is still expecting a big turnout.

This week, as the coronavirus infection rate climbed higher in New York state new microcluster zones were announced in New York, and some existing ones were intensified.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has declared more regions as microcluster coronavirus hot zones as the rate of COVID-19 continues to climb in New York.

The new designations come as New York City’s mayor closed the city’s schools effective Thursday, as the virus rate there reached 3%.

Cuomo is upgrading some yellow zones in western New York to orange zones. Effective Friday, there will be new restrictions on religious gatherings, along with some business closures, including gyms, hair salons and tattoo parlors. Indoor dining is banned.

Now that elections are over, leaders of the New York State Legislature are facing pressure from a wide range of groups to reconvene and deal with pandemic-related economic problems. Legislative leaders say they are not ruling it out.

Sixty-three politically progressive advocacy groups have written a letter to legislative leaders, asking them to hold an emergency session before 2020 ends.

Halloween weekend combined with testing delays allowed the coronavirus to spread among students on the Syracuse University campus, forcing it to move to remote learning.  As students leave campus this week, officials are looking back at how things went wrong.

SU Vice Chancellor Michael Haynie said keeping thousands of students mostly COVID-free for nearly four months was actually a pretty impressive feat, creating a bubble around students. But that bubble burst on Halloween weekend, in part he believes, because of coronavirus fatigue.

Onondaga County is streamlining the contact tracing regimen that’s used to try and corral the coronavirus. This comes as the county continues to report large numbers of positive cases every day.

Numbers in the last few weeks have hovered between 150 and more than 200 new cases every day and Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon says that’s a lot of work for county staff doing case investigations.

The counting of absentee ballots in Onondaga County might not resume until the end of the month, after eight positive cases of COVID-19 were reported among staffers at the county Board of Elections. But the elections commissioners have a plan, as a state deadline looms.