ALBANY– Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he is sending COVID mobile testing sites to rural farms ahead of the fall harvest in light of “several clusters” at farms.

Several farmworkers are calling on lawmakers and Cuomo to pass stronger workplace protections in light of the coronavirus, and the New York Farm Bureau said it asked the state for increased testing in April.

“More accessible testing and additional housing support for incoming guest workers will better protect farm employees who are already working on farms as well as help to prevent the spread of the virus,” New York Farm Bureau spokesperson Steve Ammerman said.

The governor praised New York’s progress in keeping rates of infection and hospitalization low this summer.

The pandemic hit New York this spring, and hospitals saw a peak of over 18,000 patients and over 700 deaths a day in early April.

Cuomo said hospitals reported more than 550 COVID-19 patients as of Thursday, down from about 800 a month earlier. Hospitals and nursing homes have reported 40 deaths of people who tested positive for COVID-19 over the past week.

The governor touted the percentage of individuals testing positive for COVID-19 in New York each day, which has dipped below 1% this week as the state has boosted testing.

Still, an average of 74 new COVID-19 patients are entering hospitals each day over the past week, up from 67 in the week ending July 8.

And 670 New Yorkers have been testing positive for COVID-19 everyday on average since mid-June, when the number of daily positive tests began to plateau.

New York is continuing to see an average of three new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents — a figure that hasn’t changed since mid-June, according to The Associated Press’s analysis of state COVID-19 data.

But New York’s rate of new cases adjusted for population is much lower than most states — Florida, Georgia and California have each seen about 30 new cases per 100,000 residents over the past week.