BUFFALO, N.Y. — New York State's Lieutenant Governor today acknowledged what has become obvious.
"There has been a lag time that we are not happy with," said Kathy Hochul about the limited testing for COVID-19 in Erie County.
The numbers tell the story.
The figures above are for Albany, Monroe and Onondaga counties come from Thursday's briefing by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The Erie County figures were announced Thursday by Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein.
Making the testing inequity worse is that Erie County has a substantially larger population (918,702) than Monroe (741,770), Onondaga (460,528) and Albany (305,506) counties.
"I assure you we are trying to get all the tests we can here in New York State but also focusing on Upstate,” Hochul said during an appearance on Thursday in Buffalo.
The county public health lab can process, at most, about 100 tests a day. The county executive noted current testing supplies is between 350 and 400 test sampling kits and about enough reagent to process 600 samples.
County government is still doing testing, but on a limited basis. The temporary Maple Road drive-thru sampling location was operational again on Wednesday.
2 On Your Side counted 32 cars passing through the facility. Test subjects chosen fall into a small handful of prioritized categories: people living in nursing or group homes, law enforcement and criminal justice employees and health-care workers.