During a weekend of mostly peaceful protests over the death of George Floyd across Onondaga County, local leaders also kept their eye on the COVID-19 pandemic. County Executive Ryan McMahon said though it’s not ideal during the pandemic, social distancing enforcement was not the priority at the protests.
“You’re not going to go around enforcing physical distancing when people are hurting the way that they were,” said McMahon. “We’ll see if there are new covid cases over the next six, seven, eight days related to some of these folks that participated. Certainly the health department will look for it.”
Meanwhile, the county’s infection rate fell to its lowest since March at 5.7%. There are currently 75 people in the hospital. McMahon said they are still working on getting recovered nursing home residents out of the hospital.
“We think we can move these COVID-19 folks who are not sick enough to be in a hospital, but cannot test negative for covid yet," said McMahon. "We have two plans to move these folks. Waiting on the approval. And then those 40 folks will come out of our numbers as far as hospitalizations go.”
McMahon said the locations include a separate wing within a local hospital and a facility in Oswego. He said more details will be made public once they hear from state health leaders.
