Onondaga County is preparing for phase two of the restart of the central New York economy. County Executive Ryan McMahon said Tuesday the numbers are good 10 days into phase one of reopening. He admitted, opening up things like law firms and downtown offices makes this one of the most aggressive moves into higher density situations.
So, the county will continue to monitor infection rates and hospitalizations. And that means more than county health department employees watching out for the spread of the coronavirus.
"We’re going to give more of our Johns Hopkins contact tracing graduates an opportunity to get engaged moving forward, anticipating we might see upticks in community spread cases in phase two,” McMahon said.
Retail will open up more in phase two, and the county is reviewing a plan for opening Destiny USA on Friday. McMahon also suggested that restaurants could use this phase to reopen with outdoor seating.
Nursing home patients still hospitalized
Onondaga County is also in talks with local facilities that can take on nursing home patients in local hospitals who still test positive for COVID-19, but can’t be released until they test negative. It’s the reason there’s been an uptick in hospitalizations for COVID in recent weeks. As of Tuesday there were 85 people hospitalized, but 41 of them are waiting to be discharged.
"One of the things we're looking at is either transitioning one of our COVID unit facilities, that has quite a few COVID units in it, to whether a COVID unit nursing home, or a transitional wing of a hospital or a facility that can be a transitional facility that can still essentially meet the needs of these 41 individuals who are now better and don't need to be in a hospital," he said.
McMahon said while they still have enough hospital capacity, they want to move people who don't need hospitalization.
“You want those beds open for folks that need them,” McMahon said. “Right now, it’s a moment in time thing, and you don’t know how long these folks will continue to test positive.”
McMahon said this was one of the big topics of conversation county executives had with Gov. Cuomo this weekend. Cuomo, McMahon said, is aware of how his executive order ended up with these unnecessary hospitalizations, and is willing to work out a way to fix it.
McMahon said Tuesday the number of deaths in the county from COVID-19 is up to 123.