NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – New York State reported it’s highest single day COVID-19 case total Thursday since the first weeks of 2021, with numbers shooting up by thousands from just the day before, while New York City’s COVID-19 daily positivity rate has doubled in just three days.
New York reported 18,276 new cases Thursday, a 6.58% positivity rate and the highest single-day case total seen in the state since Jan. 14.
The state has seen case totals above 9,000 on all but four days during December, but Thursday’s number is the month’s highest by over 5,000 cases.
New York’s seven-day positivity rate has shot up from 3.82% the day after Thanksgiving to 5.11% as of Thursday.
In New York City, positivity rates have gone up massively, with the most recent figure from Monday showing a 6.51% positivity rate. That’s after the city was in the 3% range just a few days earlier.
Statewide hospitalizations are at about 3,765, a far cry from when that number dipped below 2,000 at the end of October.
Deaths due to the virus have remained at about where they were throughout the month, with Thursday’s number being 53.
Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist who has advised Mayor Bill de Blasio on the city’s pandemic response, tweeted a graph showing the city’s test positivity doubling from 3.9% last Thursday (Dec. 9) to 7.8% on Sunday (Dec. 12).
“Um, we've never seen this before in NYC,” Varma tweeted. “Test positivity doubling in three days.”
Varma believes this shows that omicron is “evading both vaccine and virus induced immunity *against infection* unlike any variant before.”
“That's only explanation for dramatic jump in positivity,” he wrote, noting that for now the consensus is that immunity against severe disease should still be “far better.”
The daily rate did drop to 6.5% on Monday (Dec. 13), according to new data from the city that also updated Dec. 12's positivity rate to a lower 7.3%. Still, it’s a significant jump and nearly double what it was a week prior.
At a news briefing Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was “heading into an uncertain time, particularly with the variants spiking again and creating more havoc than we’ve anticipated.”
Hochul said the state has been preparing for a “winter surge” in cases but that we are “in for a rough ride this winter season.”
Just days ago, the governor implemented a statewide mask mandate for all indoor public places that don’t already require people to show proof of vaccination.
New York state’s health commissioner, Dr. Mary Bassett, said at a COVID-19 briefing Thursday that hospitalizations have spiked significantly as the colder weather arrives.
“If you compare the level of hospitalizations on Dec. 14 compared to where it was in July, or even at the peak of the delta [variant] surge, you can see that hospitalizations are the highest that we’ve seen in months and are still going up,” Bassett said, adding that vaccinations have also started to flatten.
Based on specimens collected last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said omicron accounted for about 3% of genetically-sequenced coronaviruses nationally.
But percentages vary by region, with the highest — 13% — in the New York/New Jersey area.
Experts have said these are likely underestimates because omicron is moving so fast that surveillance attempts can’t keep up.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that early data suggests omicron is more transmissible than delta, with a doubling time of about two days.
In many ways, omicron remains a mystery. Hints are emerging from South Africa, where it was first reported, indicating it may cause less severe disease than delta but be better at evading vaccines.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Wednesday there is no need, for now, for an omicron-specific booster shot.
The two-dose mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna shots, still appear to offer considerable protection against hospitalization from omicron, Fauci said.
“If we didn’t have these tools, I would be telling you to really, really be worried,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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