Memorial Day at the beach

CHARLOTTE, N.Y. (WHEC) — The Memorial Day heat brought hundreds of people out to Ontario Beach Park Monday.

Some people said today was the busiest they’ve seen it since the pandemic started. While some were gathered in large groups and mingling, others said they made sure to social distance.

"To see the beach this full I’ve never seen it like this, we have a dozen tourists in Rochester, I love it, it brings life to the city that everyone always talks about," Shardae Cooper said, from Rochester.

Ontario Beach was the hot spot for people to enjoy their memorial day weekend. Groups of people piled on the beach and on the boardwalk. While some are reverting back to "pre-COVID" times, others say they made sure to keep a distance.

"Right now a lot of people are recovering from COVID, so they want to be out but we also social distance, we aren’t getting close to anyone," Katiushka Velasquez said, from Irondequoit.

"We were going to go to Abbots, but because of how big the line was we didn’t want to be that close to people so we shy away from that," Cooper added.

According to the CDC COVID map, COVID community levels are still considered high in Monroe County. But our surrounding counties are considered "medium." Orange is the highest category.

While COVID is still a concern, some say it was easy to slip back into "normal" or "post-pandemic" life.

"I get it though because it’s been so long, and then for the numbers to go down drastically, we haven’t really heard about numbers going up, so for it to kind of be left in the dark and we think we’ve overcome it, it just makes it hard to stay on top of it," Cooper added.

The recommendation from the CDC for orange zones is to mask indoors, and in yellow, it’s recommended to mask if you’re high risk.