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There have now been 2,001,761 COVID-19 tests administered in Westchester since the pandemic began nearly a year ago, resulting in a total of 104,400 positive cases.
Latimer said that the county is monitoring 6,019 active COVID-19 cases as of Monday, Feb. 22, down from 6,677 on Friday, Feb. 19, and from more than 11,000 at the end of January. The overall 5.2 percent positive infection rate is down slightly and among the lowest in the Hudson Valley.
There are currently 403 COVID-19 patients being treated in Westchester hospitals, and there were 33 new virus-related deaths reported in the county in the past week, Latimer said. A total of 2,054 people have died from COVID-19 in Westchester since last March.
Latimer also noted that there has been a small uptick in COVID-19 cases at the Westchester County Jail, with five active cases in employees and nine in residents, all of whom are in isolation. The County Executive noted that "no one has died at the Westchester County Jail," during a COVID-19 briefing on Monday, Feb. 22.
"We are doing everything we can to make sure we have the right protocols at the jail," he said.
According to Latimer, there have been 60,731 COVID-19 vaccinations at the Westchester County Center, averaging about 1,000 each day, though it has the capacity to do much more if the state and federal government increase allocations of the vaccine to the region. A total of 70,438 vaccines have been administered at the County Center and County clinics.
"There is not yet a sufficient amount of vaccine to meet the number of people eligible," he said during his COVID-19 briefing, noting that 1,900 vaccine appointments had to be postponed due to recent inclement weather.
According to Latimer, prior to Thanksgiving, there were 1,510 COVID-19-related fatalities in Westchester, with 544 deaths since, representing approximately a third of all fatalities.
"I can tell you there is clearly a correlation between private behavior and activity, which is something we cannot enforce ... We're not going to have someone knocking on your door to see what you are doing to celebrate New Years' or Christmas," he said. "During that period of time, we saw a significant spike in the number of fatalities.
"You cannot deny that we've had a rapid increase in the number of fatalities since Thanksgiving Day," Latimer continued. "It may be that the people at the party did not die of COVID, but they got COVID and passed it on to someone else who had an underlying illness and suffered."
The number of active COVID-19 cases in Westchester, by municipality, according to the Department of Health on Feb. 19:
- Yonkers: 1,616;
- New Rochelle: 554;
- Mount Vernon: 554;
- White Plains: 372;
- Port Chester: 242;
- Yorktown: 221;
- Greenburgh: 206;
- Ossining Village: 179;
- Harrison: 168;
- Eastchester: 147;
- Peekskill: 140;
- Cortlandt: 131;
- Mount Pleasant: 120;
- Somers: 103;
- Mamaroneck Village: 90;
- Tarrytown: 83;
- Rye City: 81;
- Bedford: 72;
- Sleepy Hollow: 72;
- North Castle: 69;
- Scarsdale: 60;
- New Castle: 57;
- Dobbs Ferry: 51;
- Lewisboro: 45;
- Rye Brook: 44;
- Mamaroneck Town: 43;
- Elmsford: 41;
- Mount Kisco: 41;
- Tuckahoe: 39;
- Larchmont: 39;
- Pelham Manor: 36;
- Pelham: 36;
- Croton-on-Hudson: 35;
- Hastings-on-Hudson: 34;
- Pleasantville: 29;
- North Salem: 28;
- Briarcliff Manor: 28;
- Bronxville: 26;
- Ardsley: 23;
- Irvington: 22;
- Irvington: 22;
- Buchanan: 15;
- Pound Ridge: 14;
- Ossining Town: 13.
To celebrate the lives lost in Westchester during the pandemic, County Executive George Latimer said that churches will ring bells at noon on March 3 - the one-year anniversary of the outbreak - and neighbors and community members have been encouraged to go outside and applaud for first responders at 7 p.m. that day.
There were 142,019 COVID-19 tests administered in New York on Feb. 21, according to Cuomo, resulting in 5,804 new cases for a 4.33 percent positive infection rate.
There were 89 new COVID-19-related deaths reported in the past 24 hours.
Statewide, a total of 1,578,785 positive COVID-19 cases have been confirmed out of more than 36 million tests that have been administered. There have been a total of 37,851 virus-related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
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