NEW YORK — New York City’s COVID transmission rate is up 32% in the last 10 days, as the city and state grapple with what appears to be the beginning of a fifth wave of the pandemic.
With 232.5 cases per 100,000 people in the past seven days, the citywide transmission rate is back to highs last seen in the first week of February. And Manhattan’s mobile rate per 100,000 residents has now surpassed 300 (320.75), marking the highest transmission rate in all five boroughs.
While it’s still a small fraction of what it was at the worst moment of the Omicron wave, it’s still an increase.
The city already raised its alert level to “medium” last week, and on Thursday, Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan told CNN all options could be on the table, including returning of a mask mandate, if things continue to get worse.
The latest spike in the city is driven by Manhattan, where the positivity rate in some neighborhoods exceeds 16%.
In the past week alone, one in 235 Upper West Side residents has tested positive, the highest rate in the city.
However, the problem is not limited to the city: it is a statewide problem, as the highly contagious B.2.12.1 subvariant spreads throughout New York.
On Tuesday, statewide hospitalizations topped 2,000 for the first time in three months, and on Wednesday, the number of new daily cases topped 10,000 for the first time since late January.
In both cases, that’s about triple what those metrics were a month ago.
Two New York City boroughs, Manhattan and Staten Island, are now considered medium-risk COVID counties by the CDC. Of the 56 US counties with a high-risk CDC designation as of Wednesday, more than half are in New York state.
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