Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon usually gives his scheduled coronavirus briefings at the OnCenter. But he updated the community on the pandemic from his home office Monday, after being exposed to COVID-19 through a family member who contracted the virus.
McMahon said he’s already tested negative once for the virus and is feeling good.
“But the safe thing to do for stopping any potential spread is for me to continue to stay home for a couple more days and continue to watch my symptoms," said McMahon.
McMahon reported three additional deaths in the community and a rolling 7 day average positivity rate of 4.6%. He said testing was light over the holiday weekend, and the rate could drop as testing picks up this week. Onondaga County will once again offer asymptomatic testingin certain zip codes along with open testing at the OnCenter. They’ll also testschools that fall in the state’s designated yellow and orange zones this week. McMahon said the weekend was spent working on these testing plans with the Governor’s office.
“Whether we’re in a yellow zone, and orange zone, a red zone, or no zone, [in person learning] can go on. So that we can continue to have in person learning. The data has shown that the schools themselves are safe, safer than the community at large. So, for many, many reasons it’s our goal to continue the in person learning.”
McMahon said 289 tests were conducted in schools Monday, and only 2 returned positive. Meanwhile, the county community at large had 212 new positive cases of COVID-19. The County Executive said to avoid further economic restrictions, social behavior needs to be adjusted.
“When you look at the cases, when you look at the contact tracing, the small gatherings have driven this really spike that we’ve been dealing with. So now we know that. Now we work on that, and continue to modify that," said McMahon.
He hopes the combination of more testing and maintaining social distance will help flatten the county’s positivity rate, decrease hospitalizations, and avoid further economic shutdowns.