Purchase College reinstates mask policy as Rockland scraps COVID tracker

Diana Dombrowski and Nancy Cutler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News
·3 min read
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Purchase College, State University of New York reinstated its mask policy late last week, citing high transmission levels of COVID in Westchester County.

The college's announcement comes amid a surge in RSV cases, in combination with widespread influenza activity and stubborn rates of COVID-19 transmission.

New York City health officials last week also recommended wearing a mask in public indoor spaces.

Bradley Sharp of Saratoga, N.Y., gets the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from registered nurse Stephanie Wagner on July 30, 2021, in New York. Sharp needs the vaccination because it is required by his college. Hundreds of college campuses told students they had to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before classes began in Fall 2021.
Bradley Sharp of Saratoga, N.Y., gets the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from registered nurse Stephanie Wagner on July 30, 2021, in New York. Sharp needs the vaccination because it is required by his college. Hundreds of college campuses told students they had to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before classes began in Fall 2021.

An email sent to the Purchase campus community Friday said everyone must wear a mask when entering campus facilities except when alone in their office or studio spaces.

Students living on campus aren't required to wear masks around their roommates but are when visiting other students in residential areas.

According to the county dashboard, Westchester had 5,513 confirmed active cases of COVID as of Monday. The county also listed a total of 3,191 COVID-related deaths in the county as of Monday.

Masked students walk into the Church Street Elementary School in White Plains on March 2, 2022. New York State's indoor mask mandate for schools was lifted on March 2, and staff and students had the option to not wear masks for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Masked students walk into the Church Street Elementary School in White Plains on March 2, 2022. New York State's indoor mask mandate for schools was lifted on March 2, and staff and students had the option to not wear masks for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Westchester Medical Center and St. Joseph's Medical Center had the highest rates of bed occupancy in the county. As of the week of Dec. 2, 93% of Westchester Medical Center's inpatient beds and 95% of its ICU beds were occupied. At St. Joseph's, 87% of inpatient beds and 100% of ICU beds were occupied.

The seven-day rolling average of percentage of tests that were positive in Westchester was just over 8.2% Monday, compared to 5.8% a month ago, according to state data.

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Rockland discontinues COVID dashboard

The same day Purchase reinstated its masking policy, Rockland County retired its COVID dashboards.

Rockland County Executive Ed Day said the dashboard had a key role in alerting residents to COVID conditions early on, when vaccines weren’t available and testing was scarce. The Republican said COVID is now less of a threat, with fewer cases and less of a risk of severe illness with easy access to vaccines and treatments.

This 2020 file photo shows Sam Donohaue, then a kindergarten student at the R.P. Connor Elementary School in Suffern, getting a COVID-19 test at a testing site in the parking garage at the Palisades Center Mall on Nov. 30, 2020.
This 2020 file photo shows Sam Donohaue, then a kindergarten student at the R.P. Connor Elementary School in Suffern, getting a COVID-19 test at a testing site in the parking garage at the Palisades Center Mall on Nov. 30, 2020.

The dashboard’s updates were labor-intensive, county officials said, using hours of county workforce time to prepare and upload.

Information about COVID cases, vaccination rates and virus-related fatalities for Rockland and the rest of the state can be found on the New York State Department of Health COVID data site: coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-data-new-york.

As of Tuesday, Rockland County’s seven-day average positivity rate was 5.1%.

The county has topped 1,200 COVID-related fatalities since March 2020, according to the dashboard before it was discontinued.

Meanwhile, the polio virus continues to circulate in Rockland County after a man was left paralyzed by the first case of the virus in the U.S. in more than a decade. Polio prevention and education remains a major focus of the county’s health department, the state Department of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Contact Diana Dombrowski at ddombrowski@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @domdomdiana.

Nancy Cutler writes about People & Policy. Follow her on Twitter at @nancyrockland. 

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Purchase College adds mask policy amid rising COVID, flu, RSV