COVID-19 cases are on the rise again in New York City as the BA.2 variant becomes more frequentalthough the numbers are still a small fraction of the spikes seen earlier this year.
The city’s most recent data, from Monday morning, had a seven-day rolling average of new cases at 610, up nearly 10% from a week.
Transmission rates also increase. In Manhattan, the rate of new cases per 100,000 people has increased nearly 10% in the last month and 17% in the last week alone. One in 1,000 Manhattan residents has been infected in the last seven days.
To be sure, these numbers are a small fraction of where they were at the worst of the Omicron variant rise, when things were perhaps 30 times worse than they are now. Hospitalizations also continue to fall, and are about 1% of what they were at Omicron’s worst moment in early January.
But public health advocates warn that society may have become too complacent about COVID, given the rising number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths in Europe in recent weeks since the BA.2 surge.
According to the CDC, the BA.2 variant accounts for 39% of COVID cases circulating in New York and New Jersey right now. By comparison, it is responsible for about a quarter of new infections nationally. Its prevalence has doubled in the last week or so.
On Friday, the Biden administration’s incoming COVID czar, Dr. Ashish Jha, said he did not expect the latest variant to trigger another national surge in infections, given the overwhelming prevalence of those vaccinated and boosted.
–
