SOUTH JERSEY (KYW Newsradio) — With the COVID-19 surge still growing and the number of hospitalizations up sharply, Gov. Phil Murphy is asking the Legislature to extend his emergency powers.
The order requiring masks in New Jersey schools expires next week, but Murphy is asking lawmakers for a 90-day extension of his emergency powers.
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Despite what he called a “tsunami” of COVID-19 cases, he’s keeping education in person.
“We currently have no intention or plan to shut our schools. We have no desire to return to remote learning, which is suboptimal, as we all know, in terms of learning, instruction and learning loss,” he said.
This comes as New Jersey reported another 23,000 daily cases — not including people who tested positive using at-home kits — and hospitalizations exploded from 3,000 a week ago to more than 4,700. Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli, at the governor’s online news conference Monday, said state modeling predicted a peak of cases on Jan. 14 with hospitalizations possibly topping the all-time high of nearly 8,300 from April 2020.
“We’re looking, at the peak, between 6,000 and it could be as high as 9,000,” she said. “The simultaneous spread of delta and the highly transmissible omicron variants, as well as increased holiday travel and indoor gatherings, have caused a tsunami of infections in the state.”
But New Jersey is not looking to add capacity with field hospitals. It’s a challenge of staffing, said state Police Superintendent Pat Callahan.
“We can set up all the beds we want. If we don’t have the medical staff to go out there and take care of patients, it’s really going to be all for naught,” he added.
As such, the Garden State is asking FEMA for 10 15-member strike teams to help with hospital staffing.
“We have seen a more than 50% increase in the number of individuals hospitalized for COVID-19 along with significant increases in both ICU and ventilator counts,” Murphy continued. “The numbers we’re seeing today blow anything we’ve seen since the start of the pandemic out of the water.”
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Meanwhile, first lady Tammy Murphy tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday. The governor said she is asymptomatic and in good spirits. He noted she was vaccinated, boosted and careful — and the fact that she contracted COVID-19 shows how “crazy transmissible” the virus can be.
As for himself, the governor said he tested negative on Monday.