State shutting COVID testing sites amid push to at-home kits

New York State will shutter its COVID-19 testing sites, including at Farmingdale State College, and pivot to the distribution of over-the-counter test kits, state officials said.

The move comes amid a gradual uptick in coronavirus cases across the state and throughout Nassau and Suffolk as the more contagious BA.2 subvariant continues to spread and masking and vaccine mandates are lifted.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday that the state would "scale down" its testing locations. Nearly 100,000 tests have been administered at state-run sites since Jan. 7, officials said.

"We have already distributed nearly 70 million COVID-19 tests, and we will continue to focus our efforts on distributing at-home tests to New Yorkers and build up our stockpile so we can bolster our preparedness for the future, keep our communities safe, and safely move forward through this pandemic," Hochul said in a statement. 

The state plans to shutter its 18 SUNY campus testing sites no later than April 15, including the lone Long Island location in Farmingdale, officials said. A testing site at Stony Brook University, which the state opened in January, closed March 25 due to low testing volumes. 

Any appointments that were made by the public through Friday will be honored before the SUNY testing locations are removed from the state's website Saturday. 

“As demand at state sites have decreased, the state’s distribution of rapid tests — which can be conducted in the convenience of New Yorkers’ homes, workplaces and schools — are helping to meet communities where they are," the Health Department said.

The state shut a testing site at Kennedy Memorial Park in Hempstead in mid-March — it had opened in December during the spread of the omicron variant — after administering nearly 6,600 tests, officials said. Another state-run site at IBEW Local 25 in Hauppauge closed in February, union officials said.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic winds down and positivity rates fall, we are proud of the role that this village and Kennedy Park has played in ensuring Long Islanders were informed, testing was available, and vaccination accessible," said Hempstead Village Mayor Waylyn Hobbs Jr. 

There remain more than 1,900 private-sector testing locations across the state, including about 250 on Long Island, officials said. The 15 state-run vaccination sites will remain open.

The state retained contracts to reopen testing locations if the need arises, Hochul said. 

The closure of the testing sites comes amid a greater push toward at-home kits.

Since the start of 2022, nearly 69 million over-the-counter tests have been distributed to New Yorkers, including more than 33 million to schools, almost 20 million to nursing homes and adult-care facilities, and more than 12.5 million to local municipalities, officials said.

Almost 23 million tests are in the state's precautionary stockpile to prepare for potential surges, officials said.

Nationwide, COVID hospitalization numbers have plunged to their lowest levels since the early days of the pandemic. The number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus has fallen more than 90% in more than two months, and some hospitals are going days without a single COVID-19 patient in the ICU for the first time since early 2020. 

Courts act on NYC toddler mask mandate

A judge in Staten Island on Friday issued a permanent injunction against New York City's mask mandate for kids ages 2 to 4, calling it "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable." But late Friday, the mandate was restored, at least until April 11, when the case is to be heard in Brooklyn, according to a ruling by Paul Wooten, associate justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department, in Brooklyn.

Before the appeals court acted, Mayor Eric Adams said the city would file an appeal and seek an immediate stay of the ruling. “We truly believe this is within our powers to execute what's best for the City of New York," Adams said at a news conference Friday. 

The mayor last month announced plans to make masks optional for toddlers beginning April 4. But city health department officials are now urging caution, citing rising caseloads and the fact that kids under 5 remain ineligible for the vaccine.

"Cases are definitively rising and it's gotten our attention," said Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan. "They will continue to rise over the next few weeks, and it's likely that over these weeks, we will move into a different level of overall risk across the city."

Although kids 2 to 4 have higher hospitalization rates compared to older children, the rate of hospitalization for kids of all ages is extremely low, Vasan said last month.

COVID cardiac concerns

COVID-19 is much more likely to cause cardiac problems than coronavirus vaccines, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released Friday shows.

For the past year, the CDC has warned of increased rates of myocarditis and pericarditis for adolescent and young-adult males receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle. Pericarditis is inflammation of the outer lining of the heart.

The new study found that, even in the highest risk group, males aged 12 to 17, the risk of myocarditis, pericarditis and other cardiac complications is 1.8 to 5.6 times higher after infection from the coronavirus than after the second dose of the COVID vaccine. Cardiac complications are most likely after the second dose. The risk also was much higher from infection than after the first dose, the study found.

Researchers also looked at people ages 5 to 11, 18 to 29 and 30 and older and found an even greater likelihood of cardiac complications from infection with COVID, versus the vaccine.

Dr. Leonard Krilov, an infectious disease specialist and chairman of pediatrics at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola, said he has long been telling people worried about the vaccine’s link to myocarditis that “it’s very rare, and it’s less in vaccine recipients than in the actual infection.”

Krilov said the study is the latest evidence that any tiny risk from the vaccine is outweighed by much greater risk from COVID-19.

“The vaccine is safer than the disease in every way we’ve looked at it,” he said. 

The state's daily COVID positivity rate topped 3% Thursday for the first time since mid-February, while the seven-day average was 2.6%, according to state Health Department data.

Long Island's positivity rate was 2.8%, with 261 new cases in Nassau and 193 in Suffolk.

There were 12 deaths from COVID-19 statewide, including one in Suffolk. 

With David Olson, Matthew Chayes and AP

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.