Dr. Lawrence Schiff, emergency room chief at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, receives the COVID-19 vaccine Monday morning. (Courtesy of Stony Brook ELIH)
As New York’s battle with COVID-19 nears an anticipated second peak, the positivity rate in Suffolk County climbed above 8 percent for the first time in seven months this week.
Long Island might not return to the positive testing levels it saw in April, but with Christmas just days away, officials are bracing for a dark start to the new year.
“[Last Tuesday] we reached a troubling new level in this ongoing crisis, an 8.2 percent positivity rate for new COVID-19 cases,” said County Executive Steve Bellone. “While we don’t put too much stock into any one day’s numbers, it is clear that we are moving in the wrong direction with new cases and hospitalizations continuing to rise at alarming rates.”
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Here are the headlines across the North Fork for Tuesday, Dec. 22.
RIVERHEAD NEWS-REVIEW
This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. (Credit: Courtesy illustration)
“The Shelter Island community continues to see a surge in Covid-19 positive cases over the past two months,” Police Chief Jim Read said Tuesday.
He noted that East End hospitals are seeing many more cases, but didn’t release updated numbers.
“This increase in positive cases is significantly higher than what they were in the preceding eight months combined,” Chief Read said.
Suffolk County tracked 23 COVID cases on the Island as of Tuesday morning, but there may be more since reporting varies between local and county numbers. The county health department, Chief Read has said, uses the home address given by those who test positive, which can be an Island address, or someone who is living here but has a home address somewhere else.