What you should know
- As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the Big Apple, many wonder when will New York City reach the peak of the Omicron variant wave?
- The seven-day average of cases across the city is 36,186 according to the latest health department report. Before Omicron’s appearance, the highest seven-day case average citywide was 7,505, nearly five times lower. That was on January 5, 2021, exactly one year ago on Wednesday.
- South Africa, where the variant first emerged in early November (although it was probably spreading before being detected), says its Omicron peak appears to have passed without major increases in COVID deaths, which experts say is promising news.
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NEW YORK – As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the Big Apple, many wonder when will New York City reach the peak of the Omicron variant wave?
The seven-day average of cases across the city is 36,186 according to the latest health department report. Before Omicron’s appearance, the highest seven-day case average citywide was 7,505, nearly five times lower. That was on January 5, 2021, exactly one year ago on Wednesday.
A significant amount of the skyrocketing positivity is almost certainly due to the enormously high daily tests performed in recent weeks compared to the peak of January 2021. That component of the COVID response has skyrocketed even in recent years. weeks, and the NYC Test & Trace Corps said Wednesday that it was running about 50,000 PCR and antigen tests per day and its share in the seven-day average was 35%, compared to roughly 17,0000 daily tests and a share of moving 19% on December 6.
Although increased testing translates to increased positives by default, and unvaccinated people are much more likely to become infected (albeit a minor disparity compared to pre-Omicron times), the trend lines for both have yet to be folded.
Aside from a brief testing issue around Christmas, the case trend line has been skyrocketing for weeks. Experts say the peak hasn’t even come yet; They are waiting for the Christmas surge to exacerbate the current surge.
Transmission trends across the city and for each of the five boroughs reflect the same pattern – a flash of Christmas Day where fewer people were tested, amid spikes that have yet to indicate they have even peaked.
About 3,040 of all New York City residents tested positive in the past week, the highest average transmission rate yet for the pandemic epicenter, while some counties, such as Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens are experiencing higher rates. high.
New York City COVID tests are showing positive results these days in more than one in five, and sometimes up to nearly one in three. As staggering as the daily case reports have become, experts say infections alone, which have been shown to be milder when Omicron is compared to delta, are not their primary concern.
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The top concerns, elected officials, experts and public health leaders agree, are COVID hospitalization and death rates. Those critical indicators also show large increases over the past six weeks, in addition to a brief Christmas recession. New York City’s moving average for hospitalizations has risen 62% from its four-week averages and has grown nearly ninefold since Dec. 1.
New York City now accounts for more than half of the more than 10,000 hospitalized COVID patients statewide, eclipsing the 5,000 mark on Monday for the first time since early May 2020 and now stands at 5,495, according to the Latest state data.
New data released by the CDC this week estimates that the prevalence of omicron in the New York region, which for its purposes includes the Empire State, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, is as high as 99.1%. New York is among five of the 10 regions the CDC evaluates on that metric with an estimated high prevalence of 99% or more.
Nationwide, the CDC estimated the prevalence of Omicron at 97% in its latest weekly update, which debuted Tuesday.
Ómicron has around 50 genetic mutations and more than half of them are linked to a critical peak: the one that allows the virus to adhere to human cells and infect the person. That’s part of the reason for its intense level of transmissibility.
The announcement of the health authorities generated confusion. To see more from Telemundo, visit https://www.nbc.com/networks/telemundo
Although fewer patients are seriously ill, as Manhattan emergency room physician Dr. Craig Spencer explained, the large number of vaccinated and unvaccinated people who test positive can turn into a “huge influx.” from hospitals because of the way Omicron is affecting them in different ways.
Could there be a rapid decline rather than a slow decline in cases, given the spread of vaccines in the city and improved protocols to begin in 2022? That is hope, although time will tell if that hope is translated into reality. South Africa, where the variant first emerged in early November (although it was probably spreading before being detected), says its Omicron peak appears to have passed without major increases in COVID deaths, which experts say is promising news.
Ultimately, officials say the vaccines will quell the increases in hospitalizations and deaths associated with the Omicron wave. That is why they urge calm at this time, and promote COVID vaccines and boosters for those who must receive them. That’s especially true for children, who have seen COVID hospitalizations skyrocket to record highs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut of late.
In New York, health officials say all children ages 5 to 11 hospitalized for COVID during the first three weeks of December were not vaccinated. Only about a quarter of people between the ages of 12 and 17 were vaccinated.
To date, 18.5% of New York City children ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, compared to a full vaccination rate of 71.5% for children ages 12 to 17. Statewide, those figures are 18.9% and 64.8%, respectively, as the most recent data shows. .
Schools in New York City, the nation’s largest public district, have implemented an improved COVID protocol, including doubling weekly randomized tests and adding vaccinated students and staff to the pool, amid the rise in omicron.
That new policy was launched just three days ago, a preemptive strike to curb the potential spike in holidays when children return to the classroom on Monday after a week off. You should receive more information about its effectiveness in the next few days.
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