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COVID-19 Update: Second Ulster case; SUNY schools stop in-person classes

Mar 12, 2020 12:56 am
A second case of COVID-19 was announced in Ulster County March 11, with a total of 216 throughout New York State. The Wallkill school district will be closed March 12 and 13 because the newly diagnosed person in Ulster County has been in "close contact" with a district student and district employee. The new patient in Ulster is a male senior citizen who lives in the town of Shawangunk with three others, and is isolating at home. Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan admitted at a press conference March 11 that the county currently was not doing much to contact the homeless or poor, and that anyone calling Ulster County's COVID-19 hotline number at (845) 443-8888 would not get help in any language except English. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that all SUNY schools are ending in-person classes on March 11. But Columbia-Greene Community College officials say they don't know if they are included. "We don’t have any official guidance from the community college side as far as classes going online or being canceled," said Jaclyn Stevenson, director of marketing and communications at Columbia-Greene Community College. "We haven’t heard anything relative to community colleges from SUNY.” The National Basketball Association suspended its season after player with the Utah Jazz contracted the virus, and the NCAA basketball tournament, including games in Albany next weekend, will be held without any crowd in attendance. President Trump stopped travel from Europe and a number of other countries into the United States, but did not say much about the lack of testing throughout the country in an Oval Office address March 11. New York officials said March 11 that they will contract with 28 private labs to expand testing capacity for coronavirus in the state. Gov. Cuomo also asked businesses to stagger shifts and allow telecommuting, and urged people to avoid large crowds. In Australia, the actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson announced they now have the COVID-19 illness. The World Health Organization said March 11 that the spread of COVID-19 has become a pandemic. And "It's going to get worse," said Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.