There was 1 death and 99 new cases of COVID-19 for Friday, October 1st and Saturday, October 2nd in Chautauqua County. 32 of the cases were located in Jamestown.
According to the county’s COVID-19 dashboard, there are 448 total active cases as of Saturday. There are 34 people hospitalized.
Chautauqua County Public Health Director Christine Schuyler said the increase in cases and deaths in the last couple months is not a surprise, “We’ve tried to tell the public that the Delta Variant is here and it was very contagious and it was going to make a lot of people sick, especially those who are not vaccinated, because it is so contagious. And the coronavirus is very smart. It mutates and as it mutates it continues to attack those who have no immunity against it which is really those who are unvaccinated. And sadly right now a lot of those are our kids who are too young to get vaccinated.”
The 7-day average positivity rate is 7.9-percent with a CDC level of community transmission of “high.”
Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 12,179 confirmed cases in the county, with 11,587 being listed as recovered. 185 people have now died of COVID-19 in Chautauqua County.
According to the CDC Vaccination Tracker, 56.1% of the county’s total population have now received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 51% of the total population is fully vaccinated.
Schuyler said the change to weekly COVID-19 case reporting starts Wednesday. She said other than Cattaraugus County, Chautauqua County was one of the only counties in New York State still doing daily case reports.
Schuyler said the weekly reports will probably have more data than the current reports, “Looking at daily case reports really, I don’t feel, is all that helpful at this stage of the Pandemic. We’re at a different place now than where we were early on and we now have three vaccines available. We’re looking more at global trends and I can assure you that if anything comes up that we would notify the public immediately as we have throughout this time.”
She also said the data on cases and vaccinations will be more complete with weekly reporting, “Right now with daily reporting, quite often we haven’t even been able to contact people yet to get their information, or determine if they truly are a case, or if it’s a duplicate, or if it’s a contact, or if they’re fully vaccinated and don’t need to quarantine. And a lot of that is very fluid and we’re doing it constantly.”
Schuyler said New York State is still posting daily updates, but as it pulls the data directly from the New York Electronic Clinical Laboratory Reporting System, it is not checked for duplicates or other mistakes.
She said the County has several new vaccination clinics schedule this month. The vaccines will be provided at no cost to participants. People must bring proper identification to the clinic and wear a mask.
Clinics will be held on Tuesdays in October at the Chautauqua Lake Central School Bus Garage in Mayville from 4:30 to 6:30pm.
A clinic will be held from 1 to 4pm, Thursday, October 14th at Jamestown Community College’s Physical Education Building.
And another clinic will be held on Friday, October 22nd from 9am to 1:30pm at SUNY Fredonia’s Steele Hall.
No appointment is needed for any of these clinics, but pre-registration is available at chqgov.com.
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