New York leaders are calling on people to get vaccinated and get the booster dose following the latest surge in positive COVID-19 cases across the country. This is just a week before the Christmas holidays.
For some, the trips are already underway as millions of people prepare to see their loved ones during the December holidays, a possibility that was not available to most Americans last year, when vaccines had just been approved. and they were not yet widely accessible.
Top health officials and elected leaders are reiterating the message that vaccines and booster doses remain one of the greatest defenses against the impending winter surge that appears to be already at the country’s front door.
In an effort to beef up vaccinations, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced plans Saturday to expand the state’s vaccination operations by adding an additional 40 pop-up locations across the state. The announcement comes a day after New York reported its highest total of positive cases in a single day and surpassed the previous record set in January, when hospitalizations were more than double what they are now.
“We have the tools to combat this virus and its variants: get vaccinated, get the booster and wear a mask,” Hochul said in a press release Saturday. “We will continue to work with local partners to make vaccines, boosters and tests widely available as soon as possible so that all New Yorkers can protect themselves and their loved ones.”
A handful of sites will go live this weekend and the rest will be operational in the coming weeks, said Democrat Hochul. Find the full list of pop-up vaccination sites here.
According to the CDC, approximately 25% of the state’s population has received a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. That represents approximately 3.7 million New Yorkers.
“By making a plan to visit one of these pop-up sites that is convenient for you and your family, you are helping to keep your family and all New Yorkers safe,” added Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett.
New York’s previous record for positive cases in a single day, set 11 months ago on January 14, collapsed when Hochul announced 21,027 new positive cases statewide on Friday. The old record for most cases reported in a single day was 19,942, when reported hospitalizations were nearing 9,000. Now, the number of people admitted has been cut by more than half.
“This is changing very fast. The numbers are increasing exponentially every day, ”Governor Kathy Hochul said Friday on CNN.
New York reported about the same number of tests performed last Friday, but of that batch, more than 260,000, there were 10,000 less positive cases a week ago. In addition, when hospitalizations are compared to a week ago, the number of people in hospitals for COVID-19 has increased by around 300, reflecting an increase of 8%.
The sharp rise in infections should be of great concern, but was inevitable given the rapid spread of the newer variant, said Dr. Denis Nash, executive director of the University’s Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health. of New York City.
“We were already heading into a winter surge with delta, which is very worrying in its own right,” Nash said.
“But then the new Omicron variant overlaps, which is more transmissible from an infection point of view,” he said, noting that current vaccines may be unable to contain the new “more invasive” variant.
And in New York City, where test lines have wrapped around blocks and people are reporting wait times of more than an hour, 10,286 positive cases were reported Friday. That total is 20% more than the day before and 100% compared to two days before. It is also the highest reported testing day for the city since the start of the pandemic, and the first time the city saw more than 10,000 cases in a single day.
But once again, hospitalization figures in the city remain low. At the height of the pandemic, there were on average 1,600 patients treated in city hospitals for COVID. In December 2020, there were only 243; As of Monday, hospitalizations in New York were just 43, a 97 percent decrease from the peak of the pandemic.
“The symptoms of Omicron have been very mild. The impact on those vaccinated has been clinically mild. It is not turning into hospital admissions or deaths,” said Dr. Yves Derouseu, Director of Emergency Services at Lenox Hill Hospital.
Despite what appear to be milder COVID cases caused by the Omicron variant, some of the world’s leading experts worry that the variant is so communicable that it can still put our region’s hospital system to the test. Columbia University’s Dr. David Ho estimates the average person infected with the Omicron variant five other people, and said the United States only needs to look across the pond to see what may still be in store.
“The UK surge is bigger than anything they have seen before. Good modeling and data is a week or two out of date – that’s what we need to prepare for a worse surge than we’ve seen before.” said Dr. Ho.
In an effort to combat the delta and omicron variants, the state is rushing to purchase millions of home tests for New Yorkers living in communities with lower vaccine rates. On CNN on Friday, the governor confirmed that 1 million tests were already in the works and another 2 million on the way.
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