Dutchess County has been busy with their website of dashboards, to keep people informed about the different numbers available from New York State, Dutchess County, and drilling down into our own communities/municipalities. There are currently several types of dashboards identified on the Dutchess County Department Of Community and Behavioral Health web page dedicated for all things coronavirus (COVID-19).

This weekend, locals on the street were exchanging numbers: “Did you know there are 100 active cases in Beacon?” one man said to another. So we thought we’d take a look. Here at A Little Beacon Blog, we don’t refresh the numbers every day. That said, the numbers have taken quite a jump over time. Surrounding communities have been posted below.

Today (Sunday), the Beacon City School District robo-called called district families with 2 new cases in the district that do require the impacted school buildings to go Remote tomorrow (Tuesday) after today’s MLK Day holiday. South Avenue Elementary School and Rombout Middle School have a new case each, and this time, will require a switch to Remote. A move which has been rare among the 6 district school buildings, as most new cases at different school buildings have included a student or staff member who had already been isolating at home, or were in the 100% Remote program already.

COVID-19 Active Case Numbers By Neighboring Communities

The Dutchess County Department of Behavioral and Community Health web page for COVID-19 has evolved, and now has more items organized, like Executive Orders, Vaccine Information, etc. The Dashboard of current cases by community is currently (1/18/2021) at the bottom of their webs page.

Active COVID-19 Cases around our region as of 1/18/2021 are as follows:
To give perspective, in April 28 2020, these were numbers were this. Beacon was at least 100 active cases then, and continued even until May. In the summer, Beacon’s numbers lowered into the two digits, hitting 47 or into the 20s.

Now we are back up into the 100s. Could be that more people are getting themselves tested. Whatever the reason, people’s personal stories exist, of the near-play-date encounter of a family who all of a sudden got it, and a grandparent died. Or of COVID Long Haulers. For those looking at numbers, the numbers we also consider at ALBB are the hospital bed numbers across the country, as we work to keep local hospital numbers down. Poor L.A. County in CA. Heartbreaking over there.

Beacon: 105
East Fishkill: 313
Fishkill: 200
Fishkill Village: 24
LaGrange: 121
Pleasant Valley: 64
Poughkeepsie: 400
Poughkeepsie City: 329
Rhinebeck: 97
Rhinebeck Village: 27
Wappingers: 232
Wappingers Falls Village: 57

Mayor Kyriacou on 1/11/2021 at the beginning of a Workshop meeting, said this about Beacon’s confirmed cases: “Cases are up of COVID. I know it’s getting hard for everyone because the numbers are up. Our New York numbers are up bove where they were in March in terms of confirmed cases. The silver lining in that is that we have learned a lot. The hospitalizations and death rates are significantly lower given those numbers. And that’s exaactly what I think the Governor and the CDC and others were hoping for. That we could whether this without totally shutting down our economy. By getting enough prevention for those that are most at risk. I think we’ve managed that. I know the numbers are scary. I will point out that the Beacon numbers are consistently better than the County. I think that means that you all in the community are doing our part, and we need to keep doing that. We are exposed more than than other parts of the County for those who need to commute to the city (NYC).”