For the second day in a row, the number of patients hospitalized with confirmed Covid-19 cases in Suffolk County rose, though the county still met a 14-day decline in overall hospitalizations based on a three-day rolling average of that figure.
By Tuesday afternoon there had been an official increase of 18 hospitalizations in the last 24 hours, up to 835. The day before there had been an increase of just 4 with the virus in Suffolk hospitals.
"We certainly don't want to see these numbers increasing. We don't even want to be plateauing," Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said. "At this point we want to see it going down."
State and federal officials have established several benchmarks a municipality must meet before it can begin the process of reopening the economy. One is that there must be a 14-day decline in the rolling-average hospitalization number, which Mr. Bellone said has now been met, despite two days of small increases. The exact rolling average was not available Tuesday from county officials.
"We do hit that metric. It's not exactly how I pictured us hitting the metric," he said. "Based on what we'd seen, I thought we'd be sprinting across the finishing line, but we seem to be crawling across."
Another milestone that must be met is a 14-day run of new Covid-19 hospital admissions below 30, which Suffolk has yet to meet. While some patients were discharged from Suffolk hospitals, on Tuesday, county officials reported there were 50 new admissions. Also, hospitals must be no more than 70 percent occupied after elective surgical procedures are reintroduced. Suffolk is at 72 percent across all of its hospitals, and at 71 percent in its intensive care units, but elective surgeries have not been added back into the mix yet.
There were also 23 more Covid-19 deaths in the last day, bringing the total to 1,296. The case count rose to 38,252 on Tuesday, an increase of 715. That overall number includes 2,563 people who did not have diagnostic tests but whose antibody tests showed evidence of an infection.
East Hampton Town has 228 cases and Southampton has 784.
Mr. Bellone announced that the Veterans Affairs agency is expanding hardship waivers for veterans who previously did not qualify for certain services. Veterans can leave a message at 631-852-8387 (VETS) and receive a call back within 24 hours.
Also Tuesday, Mr. Bellone announced that a new county tool called Dashboard of Hope has been developed and published online. The Dashboard of Hope can be used by residents to share positive news, good deeds, and other uplifting stories, and can be found at suffolkcountyny.gov/dashboardofhope.