Albany, N.Y. - During Governor Andrew Cuomo's press conference today he announced that there are now 59 cases of the UK variant of Covid 19 in the state. One of those cases is in Onondaga County.
There is also one in Jefferson and 4 in Tompkins counties. Cuomo said that variant is up 70% more transmissible.
He also said it is "factually inarguable" that New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, paid a higher price for COVID and he once again said it would be a fair thing that NY receives 15 billion dollars from the Federal Government. He also pushed the government to repeal SALT calling it unconstitutional
He announced another 153 people died in New York from Covid-19, and the number of people hospitalized for the disease declined Thursday to 7,937, and of the 203,627 coronavirus tests reported to the state on Thursday, 4.31% were positive.
He said in relation to hospitals vaccinating their staff, they have one more week for this allocation, and then he is going to reallocate the doses that were set aside for the hospital workers and give them to the local health departments to vaccinate people with co-morbidities". That will start to happen on February 15th, according to Cuomo.
He also said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be a game-changer. He said it's a single dose and does not require the cold storage that the Pfizer vaccine requires.