Greene County Public Health Department

At the end of teacher appreciation week - we have to acknowledge that without teachers, we wouldn't have any other professions out there! Thank you to the teachers who have inspired their students to make positive change to the world. We couldn't do it without you.

Public Health and the (amazing/hardworking) Greene County Paramedics traveled across the county over the past few days bringing Pfizer vaccines to high school students ages 16 and up (with parent permission). Here we are at Coxsackie-Athens High School vaccinating a great group of kids who are doing their part!

Here are the numbers for Thursday, May 6th.

It's Nurses Appreciation Week! We want to take the time to thank ALL of the wonderful nurses (and healthcare workers) who have continued to selflessly risk their own health and safety to protect ours. Our Public Health Nurses have been participating in our weekly vaccine clinics, all while handling positive COVID19 cases, lyme and rabies reports, communicable disease, Maternal Child Health, Family Planning, and the list goes on... Make sure to tell the nurses in your life how important they are, today and every day.

Please share the wonderful opportunity to access FREE fresh produce from local farms!

Here are our numbers for today, May 5th. While we encourage healthy discussions, we do ask that you keep comments appropriate.

Here are the numbers for Thursday, April 8th.

Greene County will be offering four clinics for Moderna first dose COVID vaccines. These clinics are open to anyone age 18 or older who are full-time or part-time residents of Greene County or anyone who works in Greene County. Two clinics are scheduled for Monday, April 12th; one will be held at the Community Life Church in Catskill and another will be held at the Prattsville Fire House in Prattsville. There will also be additional vaccine clinics at the Community Life Church in Catskill on Wednesday, April 14th and Thursday, April 15th. Please register here before arriving, no walk-ins will be accepted. https://www.greenegovernment.com/covid

Here are our numbers for today, April 7th. If you'd like the know the number of people vaccinated across the state, follow this link https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/covid-19-vaccine-track

Happy World Health Day! All humans deserve the right to live healthy, happy, fulfilling lives.

Are you or is someone you know homebound, or have great difficulty in getting to a vaccine clinic site? Fill out the notification form, check the "I am homeboun...d" box as 'Yes', and submit it to us. We can easily sort those individuals and have a Public Health nurse, or Greene EMS Paramedic come directly to the residence to administer a vaccine. No computer, no problem! Simply call 518-822-9600 and ask a Healthcare Consortium representative to fill a form out for you and submit it into our system. https://www.greenegovernment.com/covid-sign-up See more

Day 3 of Public Health Week!

This article details how the Pfizer vaccine has worked in the real world over the past few months. The results are promising.

See below with updates regarding wedding receptions:

Here are our numbers for today, February 25th.

What's really going on with COVID19 cases? This infographic from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health helps explain what's going on with the current number of COVID19 cases and how they seem to be changing.

We are close to getting a third vaccination, made by Johnson and Johnson, soon being available across the country. This would eventually increase vaccine availability and hopefully speed up the distribution process. We should know by early next week if the FDA will approve this vaccine for emergency use against COVID19. Stay tuned...

Here are our numbers for today, December 30th.

Reminder that the County Office Building will be closed this Friday, January 1st. If you have a public health emergency that cannot wait until Monday, call dispatch at (518)622-3344 and ask for the Public Health Supervisor on call.

Our call load has increased tremendously over the past week. Many of these calls are due to people looking for testing after being exposed to a positive person on Christmas. Our cases are not coming from grocery stores or from walking down the street. The majority of our cases are large extended families testing positive after exposing each other through living room spread. Do your best to limit exposure with the individuals who do not live in your house. We try our best to keep this page updated, but please have patience when trying to contact us (either on Facebook or by phone). We receive hundreds of calls each day, and our small but mighty staff have been working at full speed since March.

Here are our numbers for today, December 29th.

Here are our numbers for today, December 28th. We've added a row to denote positive cases in adult care facilities, as well as positive cases located within correctional facilities. We've had 69 new laboratory confirmed cases since last Friday; we've seen incredible jumps in daily positives over the past 2 weeks. We've also had another death within our community, and we send our most sincere condolences to the loved ones. We expect to see our numbers continue to rise over the coming weeks.

PLEASE READ: Here is the updated town breakdown of COVID19 cases as of last night. We will update the town counts on the first Friday of each month. Cases are broken down by town; some small townships are added to their larger neighboring town in order to protect privacy. Catskill and Coxsackie are broken up into community cases and specialized cases (within nursing home/correctional facility). If you add up the numbers from each category, you will see the total number f...or that town. The final column to the right shows where all the current positives are located. Right now, we have 23 positive cases located in the following towns: Cairo, Catskill, Cornwallville, Coxsackie, Climax, East Durham, Haines Falls, Leeds, Round Top, South Cairo, Tannersville & West Coxsackie. Greene County Public Health is a partial service health department. This means we do not have the full staffing/capabilities of other full service health departments. Despite this, our small (but mighty) staff are not only working tirelessly on COVID19, but we are still maintaining all other programs/services we offer (immunizations, lead, rabies, communicable disease, Early Intervention, etc). Because of this, it is challenging for us to frequently update the town counts, as they change daily. We understand this information is important to community members, so we are doing our best to keep you updated. We do want to remind everyone, though, that you should still be treating ALL locations as if there are positive cases.

Here are our numbers for today, November 5th. As of now, 27,625 Greene County residents have been tested for COVID19 and 1.9% of those tests have been positive. Yesterday, 528 residents were tested and 5 new cases were found, giving us a daily positive rate of 0.9%. Our 7-day rolling positive rate is 0.8%. As stated above, there are 5 new cases today: 4 in the general community and 1 incarcerated individual. Right now, we have a total of 23 active cases (1 within Greene Correctional). We discharged 7 individuals from quarantine today, 4 in the general community and 3 incarcerated individuals. One of our hospitalized cases has returned home.

Type 2 Diabetes also occurs in our youth, and those rates are rising. Reach out to your child's healthcare provider with concerns.

Our friends at Warren County Public Health shared this great image, helping to explain why we quarantine for 14 days after a positive exposure. This virus can be in your body up to 14 days before you become symptomatic or contagious. Testing too soon after exposure can lead to "false negatives". This is because it can take many days for enough of the virus to build up in your body before it will show up on a test. "False positives" do occur, but they are very rare. It may... sound a little silly, but think of it as similar to a pregnancy test. If someone is pregnant but takes a test too soon, they may get a negative result because there wasn't enough hormone in the body for the test to find it yet. As the days go on and those pregnancy hormones increase, we then see the positive test. It works similar for COVID19 tests: if you take a test too soon, there may not be enough virus in the body for the test to catch it. This is why we usually do not recommend a person getting tested until at least 8-10 days after exposure. See more

We would like to remind everyone that hate speech is NOT tolerated on our page. While we understand people have different beliefs regarding the COVID19 pandemic, we will not allow any type of discrimination, injustice, or gross misinformation in our comment sections. Any comments with inappropriate words will be automatically blocked by the Facebook algorithm. Please keep your comments/conversations respectful so that we can continue to have productive discussions.

REMINDER: Next week, we will be holding our weekly testing on Monday, November 9th. Since Wednesday the 11th is Vereran's Day, the County Office Building will be closed. Appointments are required; please call us at (518)719-3600 to reserve a spot.

PLEASE NOTE: Our number are posted near the end of each business day, instead of earlier, in an effort to give you the most up-to-date daily data. Here are our numbers for today, November 4th. As of now, 27,097 Greene County residents have been tested for COVID19 and 1.9% of those tests have been positive. Yesterday, 528 residents were tested and 5 positive cases were found, giving us a daily positive average of 0.9%. We have a 7-day rolling positive average of 0.8%, with the rest of New York State hovering around 1.5%. As stated before, there are 5 new positive cases, all within our community population. We've had 9 individuals (1 incarcerated/8 community) discharged from care since Monday.

We've talked about COVID19 effecting our physical health, but rarely do we talk about how this virus has effected our mental health. This link provides information and resources for those who have been effected (and that's almost all of us). No matter where you live or what you do, take the time to care for your mind. Mental Health is Public Health.

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month

The County Office Building will be closed today, for Election Day. We will be back in the offices tomorrow, Wednesday, November 4th.

Here are our numbers for today, November 2nd. As of now, 26,522 Greene County residents have been tested for COVID-19 and 1.9% of those tests have been positive.

Here are our numbers for today, October 30th. As of now, 25,615 Greene County residents have been tested for COVID19 and 2% of those tests have been positive. We have a 7-day rolling positive average of 1.2% (on par with the rest of NYS). Today, we received notice of 4 new positive COVID19 cases, all in the general community (not inmates). One person from the general community was discharged from care today, as well. We are still averaging about half of our positive cases outside of Greene Correctional Facility. We've also had 2 individuals discharged from the hospital since our peak (5 cases on Oct. 28th) a few days ago. We hope you all have a wonderful, safe, and spooky weekend!

It's not uncommon for older homes to have lead in the paint, especially in Greene County. With wear and tear, that lead paint turns into lead dust and gets kicked up into the air. It is important to clean with a wet object, to keep that dust from spreading. A wet washcloth will help keep the dust down better than a dry cleaner. (This is only for homes with lead-based paint, otherwise your usual cleaning routine is safe.)