NYC, California report worrisome coronavirus numbers
NEW YORK — The nation continues to get troubling reminders that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over.
On Monday, New York City entered a higher risk level for transmission as cases continued their steady rise. On the other coast, California has recorded a nearly 30% increase in cases over the past week, causing some health officials to suspect the state is headed into a new pandemic wave.
The city moved into the medium, or yellow, risk category for virus transmission as cases continued their steady rise, a development that could trigger the return of public health restrictions, although they are not required to be reinstated at this point.
The city is now seeing nearly 2,500 new cases per day, a significant jump from about 600 daily cases in early March. The latest rise, fueled by the highly contagious omicron subvariant known as BA.2, has seen case levels as high as when the delta variant swept through the city last year.
What’s more, case levels in New York and around the country are probably much higher than the official statistics because many residents are testing at home, and positive at-home tests are not typically included in official tallies.
Mayor Eric Adams, who contracted the virus last month, is focused on the city’s economic recovery and workers are returning to offices.
Adams has emphasized that hospitalizations and deaths remain low. There are more than 50 new hospitalizations and four or five deaths on average in the city each day. In January, new hospitalizations rose to 1,000 per day and deaths to more than 120 per day.
Adams, a Democrat who took office in January, has said he supports keeping a mask mandate on the subway, which Gov. Kathy Hochul has maintained for all public transit across the state.
At a traffic safety announcement in the Brooklyn borough on Monday, Adams said officials continued to keep a close eye on case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths from covid. He said that the city had no immediate plans to reinstitute indoor vaccine mandates for public spaces.
“We’re not there yet,” the mayor said, adding: “We can’t close down the city again. If we make the right decisions, we’re not going to have to worry about doing that.”
Earlier in the briefing, he urged New Yorkers to follow his own example when it came to weathering covid.
Many New Yorkers might be ready to move past the pandemic, but the virus is spreading rapidly again. As a result, the city should consider bringing back some public health restrictions that lapsed, said Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.
Adams introduced the color-coded alert system in March, based on parameters set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
New York had remained since then at the lowest level of risk, represented by the color green, meaning virus cases had mostly stayed below 200 per 100,000 residents per week. The city has now surpassed that threshold, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, the health commissioner, said Monday.
The alert system lists several steps Adams should consider at the medium level: requiring masks in schools again and bringing back the city’s system for checking for proof of vaccination at restaurants, gyms and indoor entertainment sites.
If the city enters the high risk level, represented by the color orange, then Adams should consider requiring masks in all public indoor settings, according to the alert system.
State health officials remation.” cently announced a troubling new development: Two new versions of the subvariant — BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1, which appear to spread more rapidly than BA.2 — seem to be behind steep case increases in upstate New York, where more than 30 counties, including those that contain Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Binghamton, have already entered the high community transmission level, according to the CDC.
CALIFORNIA CASES
California has been recording about 5,600 coronavirus cases a day over the past week, its highest case rate since early March. California’s latest per capita case rate — 100 cases a week for every 100,000 residents — is just enough to meet the threshold for a high rate of coronavirus transmission, data analyzed by The Los Angeles Times show.
The increase in California’s coronavirus cases coincides with a loosening of covid-19 restrictions such as mask mandates and vaccine verification rules, as well as the rise of new subvariants of the omicron strain.
“We’re expecting a small surge that may mirror something that we saw in delta last summer, in early July, but it’s happening now, in May,” Dr. Curtis Chan, deputy health officer for San Mateo County, said in an interview.
Chan expects a rise in hospitalizations and deaths but doesn’t believe a new surge would be as bad as last winter’s omicron wave.
Hospitalizations have risen 7% in the past week, ticking up to 1,037 statewide as of Saturday. Of them, 146 were in intensive care units, a figure that’s up 13% over the same time period.
The number of hospitalizations is still among the lowest levels of the pandemic. But the state’s covid Assessment Tool ensemble forecast suggests hospitalizations will go up by an additional 65% by Memorial Day and that the number of covid-19 patients needing intensive care will double by then.
On Sunday, the state estimated that each infected Californian is typically transmitting the virus to more than one person, which may indicate the virus’s spread is increasing.
San Mateo County has California’s highest coronavirus case rate — with 222 cases a week for every 100,000 residents. San Francisco is second, with a rate of 220. Los Angeles County’s rate is 127.
There’s some speculation that case rates are relatively higher in the Bay Area in part because of a high rate of testing. Still, the data is concerning enough that San Mateo County is warning nursing homes, jails, shelters and similar settings about the need to take additional precautions, Chan said.
“We’re certainly seeing it amongst people presenting in urgent care [centers and] emergency rooms,” Chan said. “We’re seeing it in the sewage as well too. So it’s real.”
Just 2½ weeks ago, every California county had a low covid-19 Community Level as defined by the CDC — colored green on the agency’s maps. But on Thursday, the CDC designated three counties as having a medium covid-19 Community Level, placing San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Marin counties in the yellow tier.
“There are institutional things that each leader of a particular agency or program can do to make their community safer,” Chan said. “This is now that time to activate those responses.”
Since mid-February, when a statewide universal indoor mask mandate was lifted, the state Department of Public Health has issued more stringent advice than the CDC for Californians, strongly recommending universal mask wearing in indoor public settings.
Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County public health director, said she was hopeful the increase in cases stabilizes fairly soon and that stress on the hospital system will be minimized because of vaccinations and increasing availability of anti-covid drugs.
Still, no one can guarantee that a universal mandatory mask policy will never return if pandemic trends in hospitals deteriorate dramatically.
Ferrer has said Los Angeles County is prepared to reinstitute a universal mask order in indoor public settings should conditions worsen so much that the CDC designates Los Angeles County as having a high covid-19 Community Level.
Although some people have tired of taking measures to guard against a coronavirus infection, health experts emphasize it’s still prudent to take precautions.
To reduce risk, Los Angeles County recently imposed a continued mask mandate at its airports and on its public transit systems. The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system imposed a similar requirement for its commuter rail network.
Information for this article was contributed by Sharon Otterman and Emma G. Fitzsimmons of The New York Times and by RongGong Lin II and Luke Money of the Los Angeles Times (TNS).