NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – New York reported another case of the highly contagious COVID variant on Saturday as the state’s hospitalizations increased.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a 17th case of the variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, was found in Tompkins County upstate.
Two cases of the variant have been reported in New York City. Two cases were also found in both Nassau and Suffolk counties, respectively. The first case in the state was found in Saratoga Springs earlier this month.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Friday that the variant could become the dominant strain in the United States by March.
While the mutant strain isn’t believed to be more deadly, it is more transmissible, which could lead to more cases and, thus, more deaths, officials have warned.
New York reported 15,998 more cases on Saturday, a drop from the record 19,942 cases reported on Friday.
The 15,998 new cases were out of 277,286 tests. The state’s positivity rate dropped from 6.14% to 5.77%.
Hospitalizations increased by 80 patients to 8,888, Cuomo said. That includes 1,144 newly admitted patients and 949 discharges.
The number of patients in intensive care rose by 10 to 1,580, while the number of intubated patients increased by 21 to 983.
The state reported 157 more deaths. The death toll is now 32,725.
New Jersey reported 5,246 new cases, bringing its total number of confirmed cases to 560,423.
The largest share of cases, 512, were reported in Essex County. Bergen County reported 508 new cases and Hudson County recorded 474.
Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted Saturday that there were 96 more deaths, bringing the state’s death toll to 18,323, not including 2,091 probable deaths.
Hospitalizations increased by 134 to 3,677 patients. There were 651 people in intensive care and 427 on ventilators.
Murphy also responded to criticism about the state’s vaccine rollout, writing on Twitter: “Governors were given assurances by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that we’d receive additional vaccines from the national reserve for our seniors, health care workers, and first responders. We need answers for why this stockpile doesn’t exist and our allocations have been reduced from what we expected.”