Hudson Valley Moves Further Away From Being Able to Reopen

After a warm weekend, the Hudson Valley now meets fewer metrics needed to be allowed to start reopening from the COVID-19 shutdown.

On Friday, the Central New York, North Country, Mohawk Valley, Finger Lakes and Southern Tier regions started Phase 1 of the reopening process.

On Sunday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Western New York and the Capital Region are both on the verge of being able to reopen. Both regions currently meet six of the seven metrics. Cuomo has laid out seven metrics, based on CDC recommendations, that regions must meet to reopen, including hospital capacity, daily deaths and new infections.

Under his plan, a region can start Phase 1 of the reopening process if all seven metrics are hit. Phase 1 includes the reopening of construction, manufacturing, retail with curbside pickup, wholesale trade, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting.

Early Friday morning, the Mid-Hudson region met five of the seven metrics. As of Monday morning, the region now meets four of the seven metrics, according to the New York State Regional Monitoring Dashboard.

The region also saw a significant decrease in terms of social distancing, according to Unacast.

Each region must meet the following seven metrics:

• 14 Day Decline in Total Hospitalizations
• 14 Day Decline in Hospital Deaths or Fewer than 5 Deaths for a 3-day average
• New Hospitalizations Under 2 per 100,000 Residents
• Hospital Bed Capacity of 30% Available
• ICU Bed Capacity of 30% Available
• Diagnostic Testing Capacity
• Contact Tracing Capacity

Since New York State released its Regional Monitoring Dashboard the Hudson Valley has failed to meet the metrics for a 14-day decline in-hospital deaths and new hospitalizations under 2 per 100,000 residents.

As of Monday morning, the Mid-Hudson region still fails to meet those metrics. It's now also not meeting the contact tracing capacity benchmark.

The benchmark requires 30 contact traces per 100,000 residents based on the infection rate.

According to the Regional Monitoring Dashboard, the Mid-Hudson region is "expected" to meet the contact tracing capacity benchmark. Up until late this weekend, the dashboard counted "expected" as hitting the contact tracing capacity metric. The dashboard no longer counts "expected" as hitting the benchmark.

The Mid-Hudson region is made up of Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester counties.