PINE PLAINS – The Town of Pine Plains in Dutchess County posted substantially inaccurate information regarding COVID cases at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck and had to retract the statement. The town’s original Facebook post from Thursday afternoon has been removed.
Town Supervisor Darrah Cloud’s original post indicated that Northern Dutchess Hospital was reporting that they had more than 80 Covid positive patients, a swamped emergency room, and people waiting to get in.” The town called it a “huge jump” from the 11 patients at the hospital just days before. No such statement was made, according to the hospital.
A spokesperson for the hospital took to social media to denounce the post, calling it “misinformation.” The spokesperson said Northern Dutchess Hospital has very few COVID-19 patients, “and while our census fluctuates, I call tell you we have been in very low single digits. We also have 56 medical-surgical beds, so not sure how we could even have the number of C+ patients alleged.”
After learning of inaccuracy of the statement, the town removed their social media post and replaced it with “In error, we took down a post that contained information about the rise in COVID cases in our area. Suffice it to say, we received an UPDATE on this and cases in Rhinebeck remain low, contrary to the information we received initially.”
The town did not indicate where the false information originated. The post continued, saying, “However, without any guidance from the state on this issue, we are all at a loss as to how to inform our townspeople about the rise in cases we are indeed seeing personally and sharing with other mayors and supervisors.”
The town indicated that no current information is available regarding COVID, even though the Dutchess County government has a website dedicated to COVID updates that can be found here.
Town Supervisor Cloud did not return a call seeking comment.
