ALBANY β Erie County this week dodged a bullet β or got a βreprieveβ as County Executive Mark Poloncarz called it β regarding the stateβs decision to place a large part of the area into a CovidΒ βyellowβ hot spot, avoiding harsher lockdown orders that some other parts of New York have had to endure.
But, in interviews with local officials around the state already living in the kind of yellow zone now in place in Buffalo and surrounding communities, life in such a zone is not without its effects.
While yellow zones allow schools to stay open, some schools did shutter and went back to distance learning because they either couldnβt afford the extra costs associated with yellow zone Covid testing requirements or did not want to put young children through the rigors of regular Covid tests β especially if their schools had not had any Covid positive cases.
In yellow zones, restaurants can stay open, but must not allow more than four patrons per table. That has renewed worries in the minds of some consumers that a yellow zone designation somehow suggests that restaurants are not as safe to eat and drink as at home.
Beginning Friday, bars and restaurants in New York must close by 10 p.m. Restaurants are limited to curbside, food-only pickup after 10 p.m.
βThere has been an impact," Binghamton Mayor Richard David said of the yellow zone his city and nearby communities have been living under since Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last month slapped a yellow zone tag on his area.
Schools in Binghamton, which remained closed after the yellow zone order from Cuomo was issued Oct. 9 as they struggled to try to implement a testing plan, resumed in-person classes only last week.
Besides restaurants, the Binghamton mayor said some retailers also are experiencing slower sales because, in part, consumers in yellow zones might be more likely to head to the internet to buy their new sneakers or living room couch than a brick-and-mortar store.
Importantly, thereβs the psychological impact on a community from being specially designated as a Covid hot zone. βThe yellow zone for us is a huge issue," said Neil Dwyer, mayor of the Village of Monroe in Orange County, where an elementary school closed after Cuomo issued his yellow zone designation.
βAt first, it was devastating. Everything just came to a halt," Linda Jackson, mayor of Endicott, said of the yellow zoneβs impact on her Broome County village.
Read the full story from News Staff Reporters Aaron Besecker and Maki Becker
The yellow zone is labeled by Cuomo as being a βprecautionaryβ or βbufferβ area. A whole area, such as the large parts of Erie County or the one in and around Binghamton, can be yellow all on its own. A buffer zone, by comparison, can see a yellow zone drawn around a more serious outbreak area. For example, in Orange County, where communities surrounding one town, heavily dominated by Orthodox Jews, had been a red zone before recently going to orange. Those two latter colors are the stages when broader shutdowns are imposed, such as businesses and schools.
Cuomo has said the restrictive zone approach is intended to target areas with higher Covid positive levels as a way to contain the pandemicβs spread. He says he knows they are unpopular, but the administration says it is a more surgical kind of approach than broad lockdown orders the state witnessed last spring. Importantly, Cuomo says the idea is working, and he points to declining positivity levels in different zones; the Binghamton mayor, for instance, believes his yellow zone will be lifted this week or next.
But local officials say the effort can also be something else: confusing.
A case study
Elsie Rodriguez, superintendent of the 6,700-student Monroe-Woodbury Central School District in Orange County, said the seven school buildings in her district had been doing everything right when classes resumed this fall. But within the largely insular Kiryas Joel Orthodox community nearby, an outbreak was underway.
The state constructed a yellow zone around the red zone and Rodriguez found one of her schools β North Main Elementary, the only one in the Village of Monroe β just in the yellow area. Right across the street from the school is a neighborhood filled with families whose children attend the school. That neighborhood is not in the yellow zone.
βThe concern was: How would we proceed? It wasnβt a clear direction on this," she said.
Among the first in a yellow zone, they found there was no blueprint for setting up a Covid testing operation virtually overnight. But they quickly figured out how to test students, and at minimal cost.
She got a call from Cuomoβs office with someone telling her of a yellow zone weekly testing mandate covering 25% of students and staff at the school. The school had two days to start the tests. The test kits were free, but getting someone to administer them was not, nor was training of the schoolβs nurses in how to give a Covid test. She also had concerns about the logistics of nurses having to still do their regular jobs while adding testing of so many people.
βSo we decided to close as a school and go fully remote," she said.
Over the next three weeks, Rodriguez worked on a testing plan for the school while working with Orange County Health Commissioner Dr. Irina Gelman. She in turn worked with state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker on efforts to try to get the school removed from its yellow zone status.
A mother at the school organized a video with students β signs were held up, including βDear Governor Cuomoβ β urging Cuomo to get the school to open. An area state senator, Democrat James Skoufis, took to the local media, saying the order involving the school flies βin the face of science and reasonablenessβ because there had been no outbreak of any kind at the school since it reopened in September.
Indeed, Rodriguez said, it saw only two cases among its students β both were remote learning at the time β and none among the staff. She was ready to begin testing β using a local pediatrician and away from school so children at the second-through-fifth-grade facility wouldnβt associate their school building as the place where they had to get, for some, traumatic and regular testing β when the state shifted gears last week and took the school out of the yellow zone. That took three weeks of intense jockeying all while students were shifted to distance learning, a problem in a community that is a bedroom community for many parents who commute to New York City or suburbs for work.
For weeks and months leading up to the September school start, parents, teachers and students were assured the school was doing everything in its power to keep them safe from Covid. βAll of the work that we had done was really thrown out the window," Rodriguez said of the three-week yellow zone designation.
βIt really built in a level of stress and anxiety in that community that I feel was unnecessary," she said, adding that she never got a specific reason for why that single school in the district was put in the yellow zone.
Dwyer, the Monroe mayor, said the yellow zone designation can have effects far beyond limiting how many people can sit at a restaurant table or how many people can attend a church service. βIt also plays a very psychological part in our lives," he said. βNow, weβve got a yellow zone and we think a second wave is coming.β
Differing effects
Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo, a Southern Tier Democrat who represents Binghamton and other towns in that areaβs yellow zone, said some schools, like the one testing 400 people a week, are facing βoverwhelmingβ logistical issues. Then there are the quirks of map drawing: In one of her districts, the children live in a yellow zone but the actual school building is outside of it. So, for that one, it doesnβt have the same testing requirements as others.
But she said, the area has developed a βcan doβ attitude. βThis really is an incentive for us to work with these restrictions so we donβt wind up in a more restrictive zone. We understand the circumstances weβre in and we know what we need to do," the Democratic lawmaker said.
Ralph Foster is the mayor of Painted Post in Steuben County. His town is among the Southern Tier communities in a yellow zone that he believes was established after a Covid outbreak at a nursing home in nearby Corning.
Foster said a local school went to remote learning after the yellow zone designation βout of an abundance of caution." But other than that, he said, he hasnβt seen a βwhole lot of impactβ for his town with only one restaurant and where the church he attends had already taken out a number of pews to allow for better social distancing.
Now that much of Erie County is officially in a state-imposed yellow zone aimed at reducing the spread of Covid-19, the question is: How long are we going to be here?
On Wednesday, Cuomo took Steuben County off the yellow zone list. But he added a town in Tioga County, parts of Staten Island and one community in Westchester County went from yellow to orange.
Jackson, the Endicott mayor in Broome County, said people have, in time over the last month, become βrelaxed but mindfulβ of the yellow zone order. Most restaurant patrons are just ordering takeout and all town activities for Thanksgiving and Christmas have been canceled. She said her police department does keep a special eye out for violations of Covid rules and, if witnessed, call in local health department officials. βOur police department does not arrest anyone," she says of the Covid rules.
The yellow zone order did change peopleβs attitudes in her town at a time of rising Covid caseloads. βThey thought that we were doing good. And when they realized we werenβt, everybody got together and said, βHey, we have to do more. This is serious.β "
The restaurant industry, among the most financially battered by Covid shutdown orders, is watching the zone approach carefully.
βWe take this seriously and will do everything within our power so we donβt have to shut down again, as that could be devastating to the industry that is already on the brink. Weβre hearing from members that many are concerned about staying in the βyellow zone' during Thanksgiving. It is our hope that we can host holidays for families that want to celebrate in a safe environment," said Melissa Fleischut, president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association.
The economic damage is more clear in red and orange zones, a bit less so in yellow zones. As people in Erie County go about their lives in their fledgling yellow zone, they should, if other areas of the state are any guide, see fewer people in places like bars and restaurants.
βThose are harmed in the short term, but itβs weighed against the overall health and safety of the public in the long term," the Binghamton mayor said of such establishments. Besides, he added, βThe more people that comply and are responsible the shorter the short-term pain will be."
