As Covid-19 hospitalizations and fatalities continued to rise, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone this week announced a plan to open targeted testing sites in communities that have large populations of non-English-speaking people and immigrants.
In a press briefing on Tuesday afternoon Mr. Bellone cited Huntington Station, Brentwood, and Central Islip as examples of places that would have the new testing sites, operated through HRH Care, a network of medical clinics throughout the region.
He did not discuss an East End location. There are HRH Care centers in Southampton Village and Riverhead, but it was not immediately known Tuesday afternoon whether they would offer the targeted testing Mr. Bellone spoke of. A call to HRH Care in Southampton was referred to a corporate public relations line, and the question remained unclear.
"What we want to do is use this as a way to deliver targeted messaging that may just not be getting through in the same way that it is more broadly throughout the county," Mr. Bellone said. "It's a part of keeping people well, protecting other people in a household, and identifying what other resources may be needed because this has upended lives in so many ways."
As of about 3 p.m., there were 15,553 positive, confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Suffolk, with 66 of them in East Hampton. There were 216 cases in Southampton, 223 in Southold, 158 in Riverhead, and 3 on Shelter Island. The number of people hospitalized reached 1,517 on Tuesday, up from 1,463 on Monday.
Sixty-four more people have died of Covid-19 in Suffolk, bringing the death toll to 263, Mr. Bellone said. He said 73 people have been discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours and are continuing to recover at home. He also said intensive care unit hospitalizations were actually down from 546 to 506 in the last day.
"Have we reached the peak surge? Are we plateauing? Are we entering another phase here?" Mr. Bellone asked. "For us in Suffolk County, we are continuing to see hospitalizations rise but this is a subject that is coming up more and more how. It is vitally important that we make it clear to the public that as that starts to happen, the message that we take away is not 'mission accomplished.' It is 'stay the course.' If we are seeing numbers improve, it is because the measures that are in place are working. We have to make sure we remain vigilant."
Mr. Bellone said the data were not clear enough to say whether the county has reached the apex of Covid-19 infections.
"The weather is getting warmer and people are a little stir crazy at home to a certain extent," he said. "If you start hearing maybe we're turning a corner here, you think, 'It's time to go out, I can do more of what I would normally do.' My response to that is do not do that. Let's continue to follow the guidance, stay the course, and make sure we are winning the battle against this virus."
"There may be positive indications but we need to see more data coming out. We certainly need to see that here in Suffolk County."