BUFFALO, N.Y. — In his Monday press conference, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the Western New York region a COVID-19 hotspot, and we want to know why that's the case.
The seven-day rolling average for WNY on Monday was 1.2% which was the same as the whole state's seven-day rolling average.
"Western New York is a hotspot, yesterday was a good day, 1.2%," said Cuomo on Monday.
There are COVID-19 clusters downstate causing high infection rates, but Monday the Governor had Western New York on the same map with all those places. The Governor talked a lot about hotspots, but everything was about problems downstate in those other regions.
Here's what he said right after mentioning Western New York along with the rest of those places.
"These clusters have to be attacked. Picture that map as a map of dry grass, and picture those hotspots as embers within the field of dry grass," said Cuomo.
2 On Your Side asked the Governor's press office why our region is considered a hot spot and whether there are certain qualifications Western New York meets to get us on that list. We also asked if there are COVID-19 clusters here that we are unaware of.
Our request was forwarded to the New York State Department of Health.
A spokesperson did not answer our specific questions and instead sent us links to state's COVID tracker and early warning dashboard, which the DOH sent 2 On Your Side Monday when we asked about this originally. We looked at the data, and we could not find anything to support our region being different from other parts of the state that are not labeled on this map as hotspots.
The Governor did say Tuesday during his press conference that clusters are determined by the number of cases reported. He did not mention a Western New York hotspot Tuesday.
