Things are heating up a bit for our county with a surge in new COVID-19 cases. After a very nice respite from masks and being able to participate fully in the greater community–we are seeing an upswing in confirmed cases. For the week ending on Friday, 8/28, the Steuben County Public Health Department announced 70 new COVID cases. Not a good sign. Another item that is a bit disturbing is out of this number, 18 persons were immunized–and one of those people had been hospitalized.
Twelve cases emerged in the Village of Bath, and twelve more were from the Town of Bath. Let’s hope that this is just a temporary spike–and not something that is going to shut us down again coming into the winter months. SCPHD director Darlene Smith says that Steuben County has now been designated an “area of high risk” by the federal Centers for Disease Control. Smith said that she and other local officials have been “scrambling” to try and come up with a plan after The State Department of Health decided to leave the responsibility of issuing guidance to local officials with less than one month until school started.
Sadly, good luck with the state guidance. For a few months our new governor, Kathy Hochul, will be playing musical chairs while developing her new cabinet of advisors and assistants. Then there are the typical, stupid partisan politics and loud bellowing from elected sorts. Sometimes it seems to take far longer than it should–but huge bureaucracies are troublesome implementing change. Especially since New York has left so much up to local governments in terms of policy and practice.
Looks like it’s time to be a bit more active in mask-wearing, not crowd others, and use sense again…
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