As New York State and Suffolk County continue trying to contain the spread of Covid-19, an up-and-down pattern in the detection of new cases has emerged. The pattern, in which new cases hover below 1,000 for a few days before shooting back up again, has no clear explanation, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said Friday, and he is not "putting too much stock" in each single-day report.
After totals of 587 new cases reported on Tuesday, 844 new cases on Wednesday, and 709 new cases on Thursday, Suffolk saw 1,039 new cases confirmed in a single day by Friday afternoon. The county's peak number of new cases, so far, topped 1,500 on April 8, and has largely been trending downward since.
On Friday at 3:30 p.m., the countywide total was 31,160 cases of Covid-19, with 527 in Southampton Town and 141 in East Hampton Town.
"We'll see what the numbers show in the next couple of days," Mr. Bellone said.
There were 32 more deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the Covid-19 related death toll in the county to 993.
While 132 patients were discharged from hospitals during the same 24 hours, there were 90 new hospitalizations, according to Dr. Gregson Pigott, commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. Across the county, 1,318 patients remain hospitalized with Covid-19, 478 of them in intensive care units.
Mr. Bellone said a supply of cloth face coverings has been received from state and federal authorities, and he spent Friday morning handing some out to senior citizens outside a grocery store in West Babylon. The supplies will make their way east, too, through town governments, assisted living facilities, food banks, and organizations, he said.
A sixth "hotspot" Covid-19 testing site opened Friday; it is in Coram. To date, there have been 1,679 tests performed at other such targeted-testing sites, located in communities with large populations of minorities and non-English speakers. Out of the first approximately 1,000 test results at these sites, 53 percent have come back positive for Covid-19, Mr. Bellone said Thursday.
One of the sites is in Riverhead; isolated results for that location have not been provided by the county. A pilot program at the Brentwood targeted-testing site will also turn it into an in-the-field food bank, providing supplies to those who may need it.
A very preliminary round of antibody testing, conducted by New York State across various counties, showed Long Island with a 16.7-percent infection rate, Mr. Bellone announced Thursday. If that average were consistent in both Nassau and Suffolk, he said, it would mean that about 250,000 people have been infected in Suffolk alone, many or most of whom would likely be asymptomatic.