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New York and other area states are looking to streamline the process of ordering and securing medical equipment. In his daily coronavirus press briefing yesterday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said he wants to form a consortium with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware to buy equipment and supplies at a better price…

The state now has confirmed over 316,000 total cases of coronavirus across the state and more than 19,000 deaths. In Rockland, the state says we’ve got over 11,800 reported cases, and the Rockland Health Department confirms 519 deaths here in the county.

A single mom from Haverstraw has become the first Montefiore Nyack Hospital staff member to succumb to the coronavirus. News 12 says 31 year-old Janissa Delacruz passed on April 6th. She was a clerical coordinator in the pre-natal center at the hospital. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help her 6 year-old son, who will be cared for by her mother, brother and sister.

North Rockland, where some zip codes have some of the highest per capita infection rates of coronavirus in Rockland and New York, is getting a COVID-19 testing facility. The testing site is located in the municipal parking lot next to the Village of Haverstraw Community Center on West Broad Street. Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski and North Rockland state senator James Skoufis, who recently announced he had tested positive for coronavirus, and other local officials have been working to get the facility in Haverstraw where there are sizable Latino and African-American communities that have been hit hard by the pandemic. Zebrowski says the Haverstraw site will help identify infection, assist in tracing and isolation and facilitate gravely-ill people with hospital assistance…

Testing opens at noon today and runs until 5pm. Starting Thursday hours for the testing site will be from 9AM-5PM every weekday. You must have an appointment first, don’t just show up. For an appointment call the New York State Department of Health hotline at 1-888-364-3065.

North Rockland’s state senator is recovering at home after testing positive for coronavirus last week. James Skoufis started feeling symptoms Tuesday night. Last Monday, Skoufis and his staff were at his Newburgh office distributing masks and gloves to health care workers, police officers and other essential workers. He was reportedly wearing a mask at the time and didn’t pack the bags that were distributed.

New York is launching a new contact tracing program to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. The program would interview those infected by the virus and identify people they were in contact with to then keep the spread to a minimum. In his daily coronavirus briefing yesterday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo took a swipe at Congress, saying they need to move faster to get more funding to the states…

On top of that, Rockland Legislators are concerned the county isn’t getting its share of federal financial aid through the state. Minority Leader Lon Hofstein of Clarkstown says the money from the federal “Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security” Act, also known as the CARES Act, is based on population and not percentage of cases, and he wants the governor to fix that…

Erie and Monroe Counties, which include the large cities of Buffalo and Rochester respectively, will be included in the CARES Act funding, but they have a fraction of the cases and deaths Rockland has had. The total number of cases of coronavirus across the state is now around 257,000 and 15,300 deaths, with, here in Rockland, around 9,700 reported cases, based on state data, and 422 confirmed deaths.