County may fine parents whose teens don't cooperate with contact tracing, McMahon says

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — At a COVID-19 briefing on Thursday, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon reiterated a request he made to parents in a tweet earlier this week: Get your teens tested.

About one third of new cases are in young people, McMahon said.While the county did not report any new deaths during the past 24 hours, McMahon said they are currently monitoring 301 active cases.

McMahon said there is a significant risk of household spread of COVID-19 among younger people who may live with older relatives. He said increased testing is also an important step in reopening schools. McMahon expressed a desire to reopen schools soon, but the state government will make that decision.

McMahon confirmed that recent graduation parties were sites of virus spread among local teens, with a current cluster of 14 high school seniors who have tested positive after attending a gathering. In situations like this, contact tracing is essential to contain any potential clusters, McMahon said. He added that positive cases can exist for about two to three weeks after the initial event, and for that reason, the county is asking the public to be honest about symptoms, recent travels and other factors that play a role in contact tracing.

"This is serious. When somebody has COVID, and you're not answering questions with intention and you're trying to mislead our contact tracing efforts, if we believe that this is intentional and this is a pattern, we will do what other county executives have done," McMahon said. "We will hold people accountable."

McMahon said that Rockland County, which is just north of New York City, has imposed daily fines on parents whose teens were not cooperative with contact tracing efforts.

Next week, Onondaga County will work with local school districts on mobile testing sites to educate parents about the dangers of the virus and to facilitate testing among teens, especially those between 17 and 19 years old.

With Destiny USA reopening on Friday, McMahon said that Pyramid Management Group, the mall's parent company, will enforce capacity limits and other precautions against the spread of COVID-19.

"I can tell you, these 17, 18 and 19-year-olds who have COVID will not be going to the mall," he said.

McMahon also mentioned interstate travel, saying that some positive cases in Central New York originated from people traveling to high-risk locations, like Florida, South Carolina and downstate New York, and traveling back to Central New York. He reiterated that travel is a risk, and asked that people wear masks while traveling and quarantine themselves when they return home.

Countywide, four people are in the intensive care unit with COVID-19, as of Thursday afternoon.Since March, 188 people in the county have died from the virus and 2,441 people have recovered.