NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Long Island now has New York state's highest seven-day COVID-19 positivity rate at 9.32% and the numbers also show a shift in who's getting infected.
The positivity rate on Long Island hasn't been that high since January. Hospitalizations have also jumped 40% in that past two weeks as the highly-contagious omicron variant spreads across Nassau and Suffolk counties.
"COVID is back with a resurgence, it never left us and people need to understand that now is the time to be extra careful," said Dr. Aaron Glatt of Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital. "We are seeing more ICU cases and we're seeing more deaths. The serious illness and the deaths have not yet reached the level of the same way we're seeing the increased hospitalizations, but that may just unfortunately be a matter of time or that may be that omicron is a little bit less dangerous."
Majority-Caucasian communities across Long Island are now testing positive for COVID at a higher rate — a shift from the beginning of the pandemic when African-American and Latino communities were being impacted the most.
Nearly 70% of communities with the largest per capita number of COVID cases over the past 30 days this month were mostly white, according to data from Nassau and Suffolk county.
At the start of May in 2020, more than half of the communities with the highest COVID rates were predominantly Black and Latino, according to Newsday.
The publication went on to say that health experts are linking the current spikes in these communities to less mask wearing, social distancing, and overall following COVID protocol.
Glatt said that with COVID surging, it's imperative that people get vaccinated or boosted if they are eligible.
"The answer to everybody is get boosted, and if you haven't been vaccinated yet get vaccinated. The boosters with either the Pfizer or the Moderna product definitely will prevent serious illness," said Glatt. "If you're triply vaccinated, you had the original double series of the mRNA vaccines and now you got a booster, the likelihood of you dying, heaven forbid, from COVID, from the omicron variant is close to zero."
Some of the hardest hit communities include Massapequa Park, Seaford, Kings Point and Point Lookout.
"Any community, whatever race, religion, color or creed that doesn't follow these recommendations in terms of getting vaccinated and trying to be smart about when to mask and to distance, so anybody that doesn't follow that advice will have problems," Glatt said.
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