BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State College is temporarily closing its doors.
The Burchfield Penney announced Friday that in response to the rising COVID-19 infection rate it will be closing down operations for a few weeks. The art center will officially close Saturday, Jan. 1 and has a tentative reopening date of Thursday, Jan. 20.
According to the Burchfield Penney, several museums, galleries and heritage sites have been forced to close for the holiday season nationwide due to rising COVID-19 rates.
"The difficult decision to close is because of Western New York region's seven-day average of cases per population of 100,000 earlier this week, the fourth-highest number of New York regions," said Burchfield Penney Interim Director Scott Propeack. "The safety of staff and visitors must always come first."
While being closed, the Burchfield Penney still plans on offering digital programming through its website, social media accounts and in its bi-weekly newsletter. For more information, click here.
According to state data provided by Gov. Kathy Hochul's office, Erie County had 2,252 new COVID cases on Wednesday. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz on Thursday tweeted that this was a record-setting number of cases.
"The increase in cases has been absolutely extraordinary, and presumably this is all due to (the omicron variant), which is incredibly infectious. Package that together with indoor holiday gatherings, and that leads us to this record increase of cases," according to University at Buffalo's chief of infectious disease, Dr. Thomas Russo.
To learn more about the COVID-19 infection rate in Erie County, click here.