Governor Hochul’s ‘Winter COVID Surge’ Plan

During a briefing yesterday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the state broke a record with 23,391 new COVID-19 cases over the past weekend. This data is four times the number of cases we saw last week. In her briefing, Governor Hochul stated that other countries that have experienced a surge of omicron cases saw case numbers rise quickly and drop quickly and she expects to see the same results here in New York. In response to the winter surge, Governor Hochul announced $65 million will be made available for counties across the state to offset the cost of enforcing the statewide mask mandate, at least $1 million will be made available to smaller counties and $2 million will be given to larger counties.

Governor Hochul stated: “This is a very high spike in cases, we’ve been watching this closely. Just what we’re seeing in places where it [omicron] started in other places in the world, just what we’re seeing all over this country. Something that was foreseen once omicron made its way to this nation, and we knew this was going to be the case.”

Source: 13 WHAM