NEW YORK — Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul made an announcement Thursday evening that the Western New York region is not ready to reopen.
"On this day, I have to report to all of you that as of now Western New York is not prepared to enter Phase 1 of reopening," she said.
The five counties that make up the Western New York region -- Erie, Niagara, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany -- will not reopen on Friday after the region experienced another setback. Western New York no longer meets the criteria for new hospitalizations.
We also don't have a 14-day decline in net hospitalizations or a three-day average less than 15 new hospitalizations per day. Right now our average is 28.
The other metric Western New York is not meeting is a 14-day decline in hospital deaths or fewer than five hospital deaths on average over three days, and right now we average nine deaths a day.
2 On Your Side asked Hochul if the metrics could be adjusted to better assist Western New York's population.
"I understand the question, but we are following federally designated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control," Hochul said. "I would not be comfortable trying to skip or try to massage those numbers to get us to a place to reopen, if they are telling us it is not safe to do so."
In terms of hospitalization numbers, Erie County Commissioner of Health Dr. Gale Burstein said it may have to do with the state's recently changed position on patients who arrive at hospitals from nursing homes.
"They are taking up a lot of hospital beds especially new hospital beds" she said.
In March, the New York State Department of Health issued a memo to nursing homes, ordering them to accept patients from hospitals even if they had the virus.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently reversed that order, allowing nursing homes to refuse to take patients from hospitals.
"Even the hospitals have told me there are people that they could discharge, and then they don't have a place to send them back because nursing homes are refusing," Burstein said. "So that increases the number of admissions because you have this backlog of people that could be discharged and they're not and then you have the new cases."
However, when asked Thursday, Hochul did not believe that policy reversal has had an impact on Western New York numbers.