The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

Brian Zhang

About Brian Zhang

Brian Zhang, a Byram Hills High School student, is an aspiring journalist, and summer intern for the Inside Press.

School Districts Receive Guide from County Relaying Opening Guidelines Surrounding COVID-19

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Westchester County Executive George Latimer announced on Monday that The Westchester County School Reopening Workgroup has released an eight-page “Frequently Asked Questions” guide that will assist the County’s school districts in addressing the health, COVID-19, and contact tracing requirements for their schools to reopen safely this school year.

Being one of the “major tasks” ahead of us, Latimer stressed working with school districts in reopening is a responsibility the county will do their best to coordinate. As of last week on August 7, New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced he was authorizing school districts to open. This means 44 of the schools in Westchester are approved to reopen their doors to students in September.

“Each of these schools had to submit plans for what reopening would look like with a host of different protocols. And those protocols involve not just what you do physically to keep people safe, but how you intend to educate children,” Latimer explained.

Although the County Government does not directly control school districts, they play a role in helping implement elements of the school district’s plan. Thus, the working group was created, the County Executive states. The Workgroup has been created to provide a direct link between the County’s health and facilities departments to school administrators, staff, faculty, students, and families as they prepare for the start of the school year.

“The most important thing for all of us is to create a safe and effective plan to best educate our students this fall,” Latimer states. “I am proud of the fast and efficient guidance the County and this working group has provided to assist our school district by making this a reality. By creating these FAQs, we are serving the proper role of government: assisting those who fall within our mandate of public service.”

The work group is co-chaired by Joseph Glazer, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Community Mental Health, and Joseph Ricca, White Plains School Superintendent, and President of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents.

The FAQ’s are part of a larger effort by the Workgroup which has already provided four workshops and answered dozens of questions from school officials and medical staff.

As for the complexity in reopening schools, Latimer acknowledges this is a heavy situation to deal with. “It’s complicated in a school setting. We have the complications in the school setting with younger children. For kindergarten, first, and second graders, it’ll be tough for them to keep their masks on; it’s going to be tough for them to remember who they interacted with.”  Regarding older students, Latimer said, “While they’re capable of understanding what you’re saying, they have to give it the same weight and importance. And one of the issues we’ve had to deal with in this society at large, outside of the school setting, is how do 16, 17, 18-year-olds react when asked to change their lifestyle.”

Not only within the schools, but reopening will also have a large effect on society as a whole. “In opening schools, we are opening a major entity within our society. It’s an economic impact. It directly involves other types of decisions that have still yet to be made.” says Latimer.

“There’s a real dynamic here involved with the schools. This is the biggest thing we’re opening, probably since restaurants. But even restaurants are still voluntary. School, if school is open and is mandatory, you have to participate. And we’ll see how it plays out. I’m hopeful, but the jury is out until we get into it, and I do think we’re prepared. If it doesn’t work, however, we’ll shut it down–I think that has to be your mindset.” the County Executive concluded.

As for the statistics, there are 434 Active cases now in Westchester, a reduction of almost 30 from the previous week, 92 from the previous month, and over 700 from the peak in cases in April. The testing has been “consistent and sufficient,” according to Latimer, with 3000-4000 range of individuals being tested per day. There have been 428,800 people tested, which is well over 40% in the Westchester area, and 1/10 tested have come out positive.

“This is a good sign,” says Latimer. “The statistics are not so you can write them down in a little book; it’s to show that the level of infection here in Westchester County has dropped. And that’s important because here in Westchester, we’ve opened restaurants, retail establishments, beaches, offices, and throughout all of those different changes, we’ve been able to maintain a decreasing level of invention and impact.”

Westchester County Executive Addresses Studies to Help Identify COVID Hotspots; also Describes Hurdles to Overcome in Upcoming Election

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In his weekly briefing Monday evening, County Executive George Latimer announced the Westchester County Department of Environmental Facilities is partnering with the City University of New York (CUNY) to study the wastewater at county treatment plants to better understand the impact of COVID-19. Latimer said the analysis could help in identifying hotspots before seeing a spike in Coronavirus cases.

“It is a wastewater treatment study to determine the incidence of COVID-19 in our wastewater,” Latimer explained. “What it is going through the sewage that’s generated by all of us. And there are ways to test that output from a community to determine what the incidence of COVID infection is and to identify and then address some of those areas.”

Latimer mentioned that this technology has been helpful in Europe and has now come to the United States.

“It’s another valuable tool in our toolkit, Latimer said, “Everything we’re doing anticipates that we’ll get a vaccine at some point, but until we have it, we don’t have direct tools that we can use to fight this disease. So, we use every other thing we can think of to be helpful.”

Voting Concerns/Challenges

In other news, the County Executive expressed that there may be some hurdles in the near future with elections amid the pandemic.

“Come this November with the presidential race, which is always the greatest turnout race in any four-year cycle, we face some very significant concerns about making sure that we have a smoothly run election,” he stated.

The county has already faced some difficulties in the June primary elections as school board elections and others were forced to be moved because of the pandemic.

“So, knowing that we had a difficult time in June, for a number of different reasons, some of which were outside of our control and some of which we can refine by the way we operate ourselves, we made an offer to the Board of Elections of different actions the county administration would take that we thought would be helpful,” Latimer said.

The offer from the County Executive is a “four-point offer.”  The first one he introduced would be helping with poll locations in the upcoming election.

“We offered to help the Board of Elections recruit additional polling place inspectors by working through that portion of the county workforce that will be not working on Election Day and therefore eligible to be poll inspectors,” saif Latimer.

He explained that there aren’t going to be as many poll inspectors because of the advanced age and fear of COVID-19. Latimer is also offering replacement polling sites, as some of the usual ones will be not accessible during the pandemic, such as those inside nursing homes and senior apartment buildings. He has offered to gather a bipartisan team to work with the County Board of Elections to help identify and secure alternate polling locations for November. Latimer also offered to help develop a marketing plan to promote early voting.

“We’ve had early voting in elections now in 2019, in the November elections, and then in the primaries of 2020 in June. Early voting has been embraced in Westchester County. We were the third most populated number of votes for early voting, and we’re probably about the eighth largest county. So, we outperformed a number of other countries that are much larger than we are in the state, and, as a percentage of turnout, highest in the state,” Latimer stated, “However, we can do better.”

He said the County is also prepared to assist with having temporary staffing to make sure that requests for absentee ballots, and then the ballots themselves, get mailed out in a sufficient time frame so that everybody has it well enough before the election.

“We’re going to try to be helpful, so when the November 3 election comes by, there will be the best possible result,” said Latimer

COVID Incidence

In the fifth month of quarantine, they continue to oscillate but the trend is the steady decline. According to Latimer on Monday, there are now 472 active cases of Coronavirus and there have been four straight nights without a fatality, a first to happen during the pandemic. There have been 374,827 tests in Westchester, which approaches almost 40% of the county’s population. Under 10% of all people tested have been tested positive, a major decline from its peak at about 30%.

“That’s a good sign,” Latimer noted, “That’s a sign the infection has not roared back and become what it was in March and early April.”

As reiterated time and again in previous briefings, Westchester County Executive George Latimer stressed that individuals must continue to be cautious and thorough. These times involve “individual sacrifice, individual modification…we’re in the heart of the summertime, wearing masks are not pleasant, but necessary. Social distancing: not the way we function as a society normally, but necessary. We have to beat this pandemic, we have to reopen our economy, but we don’t do it by gusting our way through it. We open our economy by prudent actions, public health actions, and we do them diligently and then we prepare for what we hope to be a better tomorrow.”

As Cases of COVID Dissipate, Westchester County Focuses on ‘Complicated’ Back to School Protocol

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Continuing Precautions Urged as “We Adapt to the Strangeness”

In this week’s briefing on COVID-19, County Executive George Latimer delivered another encouraging message that the Coronavirus numbers “continue to show the dimension we’ve been talking about for quite a while.”

According to Latimer, 347,649, or 35%, of people in Westchester County have been tested for Coronavirus, and despite the rise in testing, numbers are at an all-time low of 467 active cases since the pandemic began.

“That’s a significant number,” he stated, “We’re seeing steadily every day 3,000 or 4,000 tests in Westchester County since testing is much easier to obtain now than it ever has been before.”

In Chappaqua, an earlier spike due to the Horace Greeley High School graduation and field day, has “run its course.” Now a month since the incident, there have been no new cases identified in the past week. The same goes for the 4th of July weekend. Now two weeks past the holiday, the period of incubation for the Coronavirus, there has been no spike in cases, which is a good sign, Latimer noted.

However, similar to last week’s briefing, the county executive stressed, “there is nothing to be overly confident about. I say that very dispassionately with a corporate mindset. We are doing well, but we’re not through the woods. We still have no understood vaccine to treat the disease. Nor do we have an antiviral treatment for the disease.”

He urged residents to wear masks, practice social distancing, wash and sanitize our hands, and refrain from activities that can put people in harm’s way.

In other news, the county has been having meetings for reopening schools across Westchester this fall, including K-12 and college to help the local education institutions meet protocols set down by the state and open safely.

“You can imagine each of those two different types of education has different challenges,” Latimer conveyed, “On the K-12 side, you’re dealing with children whose ability to follow certain restrictions and orders is much more difficult than older students,” he explained.

“When you get to the college level, you’re dealing with students who are on campus in a dorm setting, and that overnight residential setting crates other types of problems than in a K-12 situation. In working with each of those, we’re trying to put together a practical group of people to work with.”

As of now, Latimer reported a “working group” that has been developed for the local school districts will include the deputy commissioner of mental health, White Plains School Superintendent, and some others in the Department of Health.

“They’ll all be working as a task force with our local elementary schools to try to provide that assistance that the schools need from the county. Whether it’s the structure in contact tracing protocols, what to do in situations when someone in the school tests positive, or assisting in purchasing personal protective equipment, all of those things and many more are part of those efforts we’re in the process of serving.”

The school situation is very complicated, said Latimer, and in need of great vigilance. “We’re dealing with a public service that probably touches more homes than any other single one because the community involves the school and the homes of which students live in. This could be an area for the great spread of the disease if we’re not exceedingly careful.”

“Overall, we’re looking at trying to deal with this strange world and adapt to the strangeness of it. I think we’ve tried to do that effectively now into our fifth month.”

According to the County Executive, the governor will announce on August 7 whether schools will open up and if so, under what circumstances.

County Executive Attributes Reducing COVID 19 Cases to Increased Testing and Accompanying Quarantining

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The Chappaqua spike of COVID-19 cases linked to a high school graduation ceremony “has run its course,” according to Westchester County Executive George Latimer.

It has been over three weeks now since the recent outbreak of COVID-19 cases attached to the cluster event. The activities that provoked the spread had included Horace Greeley High School’s drive-in and “field event,” which both had limited social distancing and minimal mask protection. There have been 27 positive cases that were tied back to the incident which occurred on June 20. Of the 27 cases, 21 were reported in Chappaqua residents, three in Mount Kisco, two in Bedford, and one in Pleasantville.

During his weekly COVID-19 briefing on Monday afternoon, Latimer noted the spreading may be gone for good. Believed to have “run its course,” Latimer proclaimed that none of the 27 individuals have been hospitalized or become severely ill. With zero fatalities associated with  the outbreak, Latimer says he’s “appreciative” it turned out this way. However, he also said he is not surprised.

“The mechanism that’s in place today is much greater than the mechanism we had in place when we were surprised by the first case we had back in March,” he explained, “We did not have the ability as a local entity to test for COVID-19. Now we have this cluster, and we have easily available COVID-19 tests. Anybody that had contact with a person who was initially infected could be tested quickly, and then impose isolation on those individuals who test positive and reduce the spread.”

“Much Better Off”

More good news… According to Latimer, almost 1 out of every 3 people in the county have been tested since the outbreak began, and over 85% of those tests have come back negative. He also mentioned that in the past month, there have been more nights with no overnight COVID-19 fatalities than with at least one.

“If you track back to the peak weeks, we had nights of 35, 50, before spiking at 72 people dying overnight,” he said. “So when we have no overnight deaths, it’s an encouraging number. We’re much better off than we were over that period of time.”

Although the number of active COVID-19 cases in Westchester continues to oscillate slightly, he emphasized that things are steady in the right direction.

“Generally we continue a downward trend from where we were at our peak, but on any given day, depending on if we see a particular spike or unique situations, we could see a few more or less cases,” he said. “The vast majority of people have gone through the two-week incubation period, survived or did not get significantly sick, and obviously weren’t a fatality.”

“If we go up more than a few cases, then we know we’ve got to be able to address it,” he added. “The geographic distribution of the cases also matters. If we see an increased number of cases all over the county, that means we’re watching a broad-based trend, not just a spike.”

As of Monday, July 13, there have been 35,327 positive cases in Westchester since the pandemic hit in March–with 529 still active cases that have yet to be resolved.

As he concluded his rundown on COVID-19, the County Executive continued to bring positive news, conveying that Westchester is headed to a “new normal.” Over the last month and a half, two beaches have been opened, in Playland and Croton Point Park. There has also been the opening of four public pools, from White Plains to Mount Vernon. This past sunny weekend, around 7,200 people traveled to these cool waters of relief. He shared that it was done responsibly and in the safety of COVID-19 guidelines, sanitizing surfaces, encouraging social distancing, and requiring masks.

“We were able to provide things that were necessary and doable in order for people to start living their lives, and at the same time reduce the spread,” Latimer would explain.

Recently, there have been many other large gatherings further indicating that returning to regular everyday life is achievable–while still maintaining health and safety for the people. Latimer announced Bicycle Sunday has been reestablished in the last couple of months with over 1000 people attending. On the golf course, there were 8000 rounds of golf in the six public courses in Westchester County this weekend. Even camps at various nature centers have been sold out and operated smoothly, despite the heavy circumstances faced today.

“We have opened up some facilities in Westchester County and we’re getting good responses,” Latimer summarized, suggesting a bright future in reopening in the Westchester area lay ahead.

Intelligence & Diligence are Key

However, as the county continues to make great progress, the County Executive stressed that this is still not a time to be unmindful and relax. “We are not out of the woods. We’ve had success in New York State in general and Westchester County in specific, but this is an ongoing battle every single day. We are not in a position where we can be cocky or confident that tomorrow things won’t spike unless we continue to show intelligence and diligence.”

“The way to have the economy reopened is not just by a government reopening industries, but that people feel safe when they go back out into the public,” he concluded. “There is no other answer to it than self-discipline and making that sacrifice of wearing a mask. We’ve had some success here, and we hope we’ll continue to have that success given the numbers. That is the mission.”