New York’s COVID-19 Positivity Rate Declines – NBC New York

What you should know

• Central viral rates are experiencing slower growth rates throughout New York, although they remain high. Positivity rates are declining even as lagging indicators, hospitalizations and deaths, continue to rise.
• Symptoms of the Omicron variant are milder than those associated with previous strains of COVID, but hospitalizations continue to rise. The CDC says that more than 99% of all counties in the US are considered high-transmission areas.
• Omicron now accounts for up to 99.1% of all cases in the US, the CDC noted. Pfizer and Moderna are working on specific vaccines against Omicron, but experts say it may already be too late to make a difference.

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Cautious optimism that New York has passed the peak of the wave of the Omicron variant strengthened a bit more on Wednesday. This day the governor, Kathy Hochul, reported another decrease in daily cases and a slowdown in the growth in hospitalization rates for the third consecutive day.

Nearly 59,000 new daily cases were reported, an increase of about 10,000 cases from Tuesday’s figures, although the latter may have reflected reporting delays over the weekend. The positivity rate stood at 17.37%, marking the third day in a row that fewer than one in five COVID-19 tests in New York were positive and the only day in that stretch that the total number of tests exceeded 350,000.

While it’s a far cry from the 1% to 1.5% positivity rates that New York City was reporting just two months ago, in early to mid-November before Omicron’s rise, it’s a drastic reduction from the reported rates that have exceeded 30% in recent weeks.

The mobile positivity rate has decreased in eight of New York’s 10 regions over the past three days, while the two reported increases have only seen mild growth in infection.

Hospitalizations stand at 12,671 as of Wednesday, the highest total since April 26, 2020 and a net increase of 131 from Tuesday, but the trend of slowing growth rates continues and is the reason for the cautious optimism of the condition. Meanwhile, the number of daily deaths was 166, again a new high since the launch of mass vaccination.

However, hospitalizations and deaths are lagging indicators and are expected to continue rising for weeks after the surge in cases subsides.

“The data we’re seeing on new infections offers a ray of hope that New Yorkers’ discipline to combat the winter surge is paying off,” Hochul said in a statement. “We are getting through this, but we must remain vigilant and not take our hard-earned progress for granted. We know what works: make sure you and your loved ones are vaccinated and boosted, wear a mask and be careful in closed public spaces so that we finally put the pandemic in the past.

A day ago, the governor seemed relieved when she said “it looks like we might be getting over that spike” in a COVID update delivered from her office in Manhattan.

Asked if he might consider allowing his statewide mask mandate, which was extended through Feb. 2 as part of his winter ramp-up plan, to expire at that time, Hochul said he wanted to “win a little more time. This trend is completely new.”

“I have to make sure it stays in the first place, and I hope it does, but I’m not going to be guessing in this business,” he added.

It’s holding up so far, and while there’s a ways to go, Omicron’s wave decay could turn out to be quicker than previously thought, especially in terms of cases.

Preserving hospital capacity remains a top concern for the state. Hochul described current admission rates as still too high, especially for regions with lower overall rates but less ability to flex resources to accommodate the influx.

New York City and Long Island, for example, top the charts for hospitalized COVID patients per 100,000 as of Dec. 1, but they aren’t the regions that are at risk of overwhelming their facilities. Hochul said Tuesday that he had halted elective procedures in three regions — the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley and central New York — because current hospitalization rates put bed capacity at risk.

The city’s Health Commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi, was slightly less optimistic Wednesday than Hochul was a day earlier about the apparent plateau in cases.

He stopped short of calling the latest data a “glimmer of hope,” citing continued increases in hospitalizations and the lag factor associated with them.

Chokshi said it is critical to continue the Omicron measures currently in place, a sentiment Hochul agrees with even as he considers potentially relaxing them in just a few weeks.

The developments come as newly released statewide data highlights in stark reality the viral force that crippled the workforce of every key industry last month and continues to assert its power around the world, reasons why Pfizer and Moderna are fighting to make a specific vaccine against Omicron that some say is too late.

To be sure, viral rates continue to rise across most key indicators, but the rate of growth appears to be slowing, sometimes dramatically, over the past week. Time will tell if this is a promising trend or just a flicker in this latest wave.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told our sister network News 4 last week that he thought Omicron’s peak could be a matter of weeks, and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said it’s possible (although not certain) that cases are going down as fast as they’ve been going up.

Nationwide, Omicron’s prevalence is believed to be as high as 99.1%, according to new CDC data updated Tuesday. The agency estimates that the proportion of variant cases in the New York region, which for its purposes includes New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands along with New York, is as high as 99.7%.

“The sudden and steep increase in cases due to Omicron is resulting in unprecedented daily case counts, illnesses, absenteeism and strains on our health care system,” Walensky said at a White House COVID briefing on Wednesday. . “The risk of hospitalization remains low, especially among people who are up to date on their COVID vaccinations. However, the staggering increase in cases of more than 1 million new cases each day has led to a large number of hospitalizations. totals”.

“We must all do our part to protect our hospitals and our neighbors and reduce the spread of this virus,” Walensky added. “We know what works against COVID-19. This means getting vaccinated and getting boosters, wearing a mask indoors in public places in high transmission areas, and right now, that’s over 99% of our counties, and getting tested before meet with others.

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