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The New York State Department of Health was reporting nine new COVID-19 fatalities in the Hudson Valley in the latest data released, bringing the total to 4,332 in the region since the pandemic began.
According to health officials, the seven-day average COVID-19 positivity rate has dropped from 4.67 percent on Tuesday, March 16 to 4.54 percent on Thursday, March 18, still the highest of the state's 10 regions.
A total of 1,101 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the Hudson Valley out of thousands of tests administered in the area on Thursday, officials said, bringing the total to nearly 250,000 confirmed infections in the region.
As of Friday, March 19, there were 513 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in the Hudson Valley, representing 0.02 percent of the region's population and leaving 44 percent of the region's hospital beds still available.
The state was also reporting 402 of the region's 680 ICU beds as occupied by COVID-19 patients, leaving 42 percent available in case of another surge of the virus.
A breakdown of new cases in each of the Hudson Valley's seven counties is as follows:
- Westchester: 400 new (114,802 total);
- Orange County: 222 (40,499);
- Rockland: 183 (41,71,729);
- Dutchess: 127 (24,409);
- Putnam: 66 (8,994);
- Ulster County: 64 (11,037);
- Sullivan: 39 (5,153);
- Total: 1,101 (246,611).
New deaths were also reported in:
- Westchester: 3 (2,162 total);
- Rockland: 2 (704);
- Orange: 2 (663);
- Dutchess: 1 (419);
- Sullivan: 1 (63).
- Ulster: 0 (233);
- Putnam: 0 (88);
- Total: 9 (4,332).
There were 278,590 COVID-19 tests administered in New York on March 18, according to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, resulting in 8,262 new cases for a 2.97 percent positive infection rate, up slightly from the previous day.
Nine more COVID-19 patients were discharged from New York hospitals, leaving 4,527 still being treated statewide. There are 924 in ICU and 587 intubated.
There were 50 new COVID-19-related deaths reported in the past 24 hours.
"COVID is in decline and vaccines are accelerating," Cuomo said. "New Yorkers are beginning to look to the future and get our lives and our economy back up and running.
"It is important to remember that it was the dedication and grit of New Yorkers that brought us from the highest infection rate in the country to the lowest and it is with that same grit and determination that we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel."
Statewide, a total of 1,765,755 positive COVID-19 cases have been confirmed out of more than 42.2 million tests that have been administered. There have been a total of 39,808 virus-related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
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