More federal teams coming to help amid virus surge
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) » Federal ambulance teams and additional National Guard members are headed for New York City, and western New York hospitals are getting more federal help, as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations keep rising, state officials said Friday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul also announced that students at state universities and the City University of New York will have to get coronavirus vaccine booster shots to be on campus in the spring semester and must provide test negative before returning from the holiday break.
“We are being hit very hard,” by the latest surge, driven largely by the virus’ omicron variant, said Hochul, a Democrat.
New confirmed case counts have been breaking records by the day in the state, topping 76,500 on Thursday, Hochul said at a news briefing. An average of 53,000 New Yorkers a day tested positive in the week that ended Thursday, compared to 13,000 per day two weeks earlier. Over 7,900 people with COVID-19 are hospitalized statewide, up 67% in a week.
About half those patients are in New York City, where 50 Federal Emergency Management Agency ambulance teams are due to start arriving early next month, Hochul said. Thirty federal ambulance teams were dispatched earlier to other parts of the state.
Meanwhile, Hochul is sending 50 more New York National Guard members to bolster the 50 already there to help with nonmedical tasks at health care facilities. Around the state, they are grappling not only with rising caseloads, but also with staffing pressures as workers are out sick or in quarantine.
The governor began deploying National Guard members to help out at nursing homes and longterm care facilities about a month ago.
A 35-member federal medical assistance team is expected to arrive next week at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, and a roughly 20-member team at Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, state emergency services Commissioner Jackie Bray said.
The booster requirement for state and city university students echoes measures some colleges elsewhere have taken. New York’s rule takes effect Jan. 15, with the understanding that some students may have been vaccinated too recently to qualify for boosters. They will have to get the boosters once eligible.