Coronavirus Spikes In Orange, Rockland, Westchester: Cuomo

NEW CITY, NY — Coronavirus clusters in the Hudson Valley continue to cause concern.

On Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo drew attention again to the 20 hot spots where people have been testing positive at much higher rates than the state as a whole. Most are in Orange, Rockland or New York City, though one is in Westchester and one is on Long Island.

"These twenty hot-spot ZIP codes require attention and action, because they are not hermetically sealed and a cluster today can become community spread tomorrow," he said in a news briefing. "It's no longer about public education, it's about enforcement — I don't think there has been a public health topic that has been more exhaustively communicated in my lifetime than wearing a mask."

The state as a whole has a positivity rate of 1.27 percent.

The coronavirus clusters in Orange and Rockland are in the Ultra-Orthodox communities in Monsey and Spring Valley. They include 186 school-aged children in the town of Ramapo in Rockland County. In Kiryas Joel in Orange County, 27 school-aged children have tested positive in the past two weeks, according to the state's school dashboard.

However, Orange County Health Commissioner Dr. Irina Gelman advised residents to consider any public site in Orange County as a potential site of coronavirus exposure, due to the persistent increase in newly diagnosed cases.

Rockland County Executive Ed Day said on Facebook that he wanted to make sure everyone knows that the local municipal governments of Ramapo and Spring Valley are actively engaged in working to stop the spread of the coronavirus in their respective communities.

"I have urged these local municipalities to utilize their employees such as building and fire inspectors and police in educational efforts and it my expectation that appropriate enforcement action will be taken," Day said. "This would come in the form of building or fire code violations and summonses by the police."

The Rockland County Health department is also responding to coronavirus-related complaints, sending information in writing to the subject of the complaint about which of the governor’s executive orders is allegedly being violated and how to correct that violation.

In Westchester, first a New Rochelle ZIP code and the a Rye ZIP code made it onto the governor's top 20 list on different days. Westchester County Executive George Latimer said in a briefing Thursday that the county is not experiencing an uptick in coronavirus cases.

Overall, the Mid-Hudson region's positivity rate is 2.8 percent, according to the state's data.