Greene County announced 17 new COVID-19 cases on Dec. 22, and Columbia County did not update its coronavirus website. Dutchess County reported another 167 residents with COVID-19 on Dec. 22, and Ulster County announced 95 more positive cases there, and five more deaths. Ulster County announced seven deaths due to COVID over the weekend and 19 over the past week. “We have already lost 30 Ulster County residents just this month of December in 22 days to COVID-19, and in this last week alone we have had 19 fatalities making this clearly one of the deadliest and the most tragic and heartbreaking weeks that we have had in this entire pandemic,” Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan said. Albany County set a one-day record for new cases on Dec. 22, with 226 new cases of coronavirus. Of those new cases, 209 could not be traced back to a clear exposure source, Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said, as transmission continues from home exposures and contact tracing is stymied by a lack of cooperation. There were also 77 new cases confirmed by the Rensselaer County Health Department on Dec. 22. And there were two more deaths in Rensselaer County.