BUFFALO, N.Y. — Erie County is seeing an uptick in the percentage of positive COVID cases. This trend has been seen over the past couple of weeks.
"We’re seeing perhaps a little bit ripple effect from gatherings from saint patty’s day and we could get into trouble with the upcoming gatherings for Passover and Easter," according to Dr. Thomas Russo, a University at Buffalo professor who specializes in infectious diseases.
With Passover starting Saturday and Easter nine days from now, this is what Erie County is looking at on the percentage of positive COVID cases: a seven-day rolling average as of two days ago at 3.4 percent.
Two weeks ago, it was about half that.
"This most recent data is a bit concerning. We’re really heading a bit sideways at this point, and I appreciate that people want to be done with this pandemic, but we’re not there yet," Dr. Russo said.
The Erie County Health Department attributes the increase primarily to community and household spread, also transmission of the virus in small workplaces, and social gatherings.
Earlier this week the county’s health commissioner, Dr. Gale Burstein, talked about an uptick in school cases.
"What we’ve observed is that recently there’s been quite a number of outbreaks either in classrooms or in entire schools that have a three feet distancing between desks and that is regardless of whether masks are being used or not," Dr. Burstein said.
She says these outbreaks have happened primarily in private schools.
This week students at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Williamsville switched to remote learning for 10 days due to an increase in cases.
The county says it’s highly likely there was in-class spread of the virus.
We don’t know what the physical distancing was like in the school. 2 On Your Side called the school, but we haven’t heard back.