County Executive Steve Bellone gave an update on the COVID-19 pandemic in Suffolk County on Saturday.

BRIEFING NOTES:

-Bellone expressed gratitude for health care workers and nurses who are working the front lines of the pandemic crisis. 

-Bellone says hospitalizations are up from yesterday, with 16 more people hospitalized, but notes that the rate of new hospitalizations has slowed.

-The county executive said hospital discharge rates are also showing promising signs. "It is a measure, I think, of where we're going," he said. "That is great news."

-But those numbers "by no means suggest that we should be changing course in any way" on aggressive distancing measures, but he said it's a positive trend.

-The county executive adjusted totals given on the previous day, citing a glitch in data processing that double-counted certain cases. He said yesterday's number of total cases in the county were 19,246; today's total is 20,321.

-Additional testing sites will open in Wyandanch and North Amityville, Bellone says. Suffolk rolled out "hotspot testing" sites to identify places where the rate of the virus spread has been higher in parts of the county.