Even as he looked back on April as "a month of tremendous pain and grief" in which Suffolk lost over 1,100 residents, County Executive Steve Bellone also struck a hopeful tone in his press briefing on Friday afternoon, saying he had also seen signs of "inspiration, strength, and resiliency."
"Over the last 24 hours, 98 people have left Suffolk County hospitals to recover at home," Mr. Bellone said.
There were 67 fewer people in the hospital with the virus than the day before, bringing total hospitalizations across the county to 903, with the number in intensive care units decreasing by 20, to 324. Seventy-three percent of I.C.U. beds were occupied as of Friday.
If the county continues to move in this direction, he said, it will meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for a gradual relaxation of some restrictions by Tuesday.
"As we begin to see the crisis lessen and in earnest begin the process of recovery, how do we do this phased reopening of the economy in a safe way?" Mr. Bellone asked. "We have to open . . . [but] we cannot afford to slide back. We cannot afford to get this wrong."
He pointed to the Suffolk Forward initiative to reopen the county safely. Key to this, he said, will be making sure that testing is in place, that there is an aggressive contact-tracing program, and that "the public continues to follow the guidance of health professionals."
A summer planning committee, business committee, schools planning group, public facilities and transportation committees, and a group involving leaders in community institutions such as nonprofits and houses of worship, each with members from across Suffolk, have been working over the past two weeks to address how best to "reopen all aspects of society," the county executive said. "The goal here is, to the maximum extent possible, to do things across the board . . . to move forward with coordinated plans so that it makes sense and is as simple as possible."
The number of Covid-19 cases continues to rise across the county, but the rate of infection continues to decrease. There were 478 new confirmed cases in the previous 24 hours, Mr. Bellone reported, for a total of 35,280. At "hotspot" testing sites in areas with high immigrant and minority populations, 2,632 tests had been administered as of midday Friday. Results of 2,014 of them had been received; 46 percent of those tested had the virus, compared to 36 percent in the overall community.
The death toll in the county as of Friday stood at 1,203. "If that doesn't illustrate why we're doing what we're doing, I don't know what else can," Mr. Bellone said. Recognizing the toll this takes on mental health, he announced that a behavioral health initiative that has been available to Suffolk County employees will now be available to all Suffolk residents at suffolkcounty.ny.gov/wellness. Friday's offering, for example, was a webinar on learning how to "practice self-compassion."
In addition, he drew attention to the Family Service League's seven-day-a-week, round-the-clock hotline for first responders, health care workers, and others on the front lines in the pandemic, which he described as "the medical equivalent of a war zone." That number is 631-952-3333.