New York broke its record for single-day COVID cases for the second day in a row Thursday, with at least 74,000 new positives as Omicron spreads further to hospitals, the state Health Commissioner said in a television interview.
Hospitalizations statewide are already at mid-February levels and “are increasing,” Dr. Mary Bassett told CNN ahead of the release of official data for the day.
Total admissions were not immediately clear as of early Thursday afternoon. A day ago, it stood at 6,767, up 10% in 24 hours and dangerously close to the 2021 highs around 8,700 in January. More than 960 patients were in the ICU at that time.
When asked if the state would have to rely on National Guard assistance to fill the staff shortage in the face of the Omicron spread, which would peak for at least another month, Bassett told CNN that the The state is tracking the data and is in close communication with the troops. At the moment, hospital bed capacity is stable, he said.
“Let’s stay focused on vaccinating people, let’s remember to wear masks, avoid crowds when we can, be careful during the upcoming Christmas season about how we plan our time with the most vulnerable people in our group, and make sure meetings remain safe. for them, ”said Basset, who suffered a COVID infection earlier this month.
The Health Commissioner says she hopes recently adopted state guidelines on returning to work for essential staff who are fully vaccinated and asymptomatic or whose symptoms resolve without medication will help make up for the staff shortage.
“We know that people who are vaccinated shed less virus than people who are not. There are a lot of reasons to get vaccinated, but probably the most important is that people who are vaccinated are less sick,” Bassett said.
That also applies to children, he added, who are experiencing alarming increases in hospitalizations for COVID, especially in New York City.
Bassett said earlier this week that none of the children in the 5 to 11-year-old age group currently hospitalized in New York with the virus had been vaccinated, and nearly a quarter of the 12 to 17-year-olds who they are currently hospitalized and had not been inoculated.
“In the youngest age group, 5 to 11 years, who have been eligible for vaccination for a month, we still see very few children vaccinated. Something like 30% have received their first vaccination,” Bassett said. “That’s a number that we really need to see go up, we want people to protect their children.”
A newly published CDC study found only 100 serious adverse events for children ages 5 to 11 out of 8.7 million doses of vaccine administered to date, which the agency says underscores the safety of Pfizer’s vaccine. .
Statewide, only 17.3% of children in the youngest age group have completed their vaccine series, the most recent data shows. Almost a third (64.4%) of children ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated. That compares with the respective rates of 16.5% and 71% for those age groups in New York City, which has seen child hospitalizations for COVID increase five-fold in the past three weeks, while state pediatric hospitalizations double.
The data is almost difficult to understand: Nearly 20% of all COVID tests in the state tested positive on Wednesday, and in the past seven days alone, about 1.5% of all New York residents tested positive.
The Omicron variant, whose first local case was reported on December 2, accounted for 74.2% of gene-sequenced New York COVID-positive samples uploaded to GISAID, the world’s largest repository of COVID-19 sequences, during the last two weeks. That’s up from 73.3% a day ago, from 11.1% in the two-week period ending Dec. 18, and 2.2% in the two-week period prior, state data shows.
CDC data for the past two weeks says omicron could account for 70% to 97% of current infections in the New York area during the week ending December 25. Nationally, the prevalence is estimated to be as high as 74%, the agency says.
Ultimately, officials say the vaccines will quell the increases in hospitalizations and deaths associated with Omicron, and those metrics are of much greater concern to them than infections alone. That is why they urge calm at this time, and promote COVID vaccines and boosters for those who must receive them.
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