ALBANY — Local county officials said they were sitting down with state and local hospital officials on Friday to determine why the state's number for the area's hospitalized coronavirus patients deviates notably from county numbers.
County leaders in the Capital Region have repeatedly said that the state is miscounting the number of patients in local hospitals, keeping the region from meeting one the seven metrics the state requires before a region can begin re-opening.
"We feel they're not right, we're going to send it up to them and show them they're calculating this wrong and we hope after we do that, that we will get the green light," McCoy said.
On Thursday, Jim Malatras, the president of SUNY Empire State College and a member of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus response task force, disputed that notion.
McCoy, who predicted earlier this week that the region would soon be ready to re-open, expressed frustration at the seemingly shifting rules around the metrics and the information he and other leaders were given.
"We're playing on their field by their rules," he said. "And as they continue to adjust their rules or different ways of doing things, I'm adjusting to it."
County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen said the reason Albany County's tally for positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations differs from the state's is because the county is more exact when it comes to determining whether a patient really lives in the Albany County or not. The county checks a statewide laboratory report several times a day for local cases. Then, it follows up to determine if those cases are Albany County residents or patients in Albany County who may live somewhere else.
"We feel comfortable that our data is an accurate reflection of the disease in the community," she said.
McCoy said that seven of the eight counties in the region had signed off on a proposed plan for how the region would re-open once it meets the state metrics. That report is expected to be made public on Saturday. Saratoga County, which has had relatively fewer new cases of the disease in the past two weeks. is submitting its own plan, McCoy said.
"They definitely don't want to be a part of us because they feel that we're holding them back," he said.
Saratoga County officials did not return calls requesting comment. A state official said they would "look into" whether this is even allowed.
Digging into the reopening criteria
According to the state’s data, the Capital Region is still at least 14 days away from being able to reopen.
The region currently meets five of the seven metrics needed to reopen. The two holding it back are coronavirus-related hospitalizations and deaths.
According to the state’s benchmarks, the region must show a sustained, 14-day decline in total net hospitalizations on a three-day rolling average basis before it can reopen. Rolling averages allow for slight daily upticks not to throw off a general downward trend that may be occurring over a longer window of time.
In the Capital Region, hospitalizations experienced this sustained 14-day decline twice — once in April and again in May. But the streak was broken Tuesday when an overnight increase of 17 hospitalizations caused the region’s rolling average to shoot upward again.
Total hospitalizations began falling again Wednesday, but as of Friday the decreases weren’t large enough to bring the rolling average down.
Hospitalizations in the Capital Region ticked down for a second day in a row yesterday, but our three-day rolling average of total net hospitalizations (the metric that will determine reopening) is still ticking up (it was 109 Tuesday, 114 Wednesday and 116 Thursday). pic.twitter.com/sm99jvXnvK
— Bethany Bump (@bethanybump) May 15, 2020
The state did set an alternate way to satisfy the hospitalization metric — if a region’s daily net increase in total hospitalizations (also measured on a rolling basis) never exceeded 15. The Capital Region exceeded this benchmark on three days in early April, around the same time that area hospitals agreed to accept transfer patients from hard-hit New York City hospitals.
The state says those transfers weren't factored into the region’s hospitalization data. County leaders believe otherwise.
The number of hospital patients who die from coronavirus is the other metric the region hasn’t yet met. In order to meet this metric, a region must show a sustained, 14-day decline in the three-day rolling average of daily hospital deaths. Alternately, regions can satisfy this metric if their rolling averages have never exceeded five.
The Capital Region’s maximum daily increase to date has been six. As of Friday, the region was one day into the 14-day streak that will be needed to meet this metric.
The state has not responded to requests for the raw data it has on hospital deaths.