COVID SPIKE HITS B’KLYN
SURGE IN SUNSET PARK SPARKS NEW FEARS
An uptick in coronavirus cases in southern Brooklyn has left top city officials scratching their heads over the cause of the increase — and residents worried they may now be at greater risk.
Sunset Park, with its approximately 38,000 households, has seen 228 people test positive for COVID-19 over a two-week span. Those results stem from more than 3,300 people who were tested during that time.
“It’s a warning light,” Mayor de Blasio said during a Wednesday morning press briefing. “It may be aberrant. It may be something more.”
Some Sunset Park residents getting tested in the afternoon were surprised to hear news of the uptick. Others were getting tested because of it.
William Chobla, 28, had just finished getting swabbed on 60th St. when he found out.
“I had no idea that there’s more COVID in our neighborhood,” said Chobla, a construction worker. “It’s better to get rid of the doubt. I’ve never been sick, but I have a family. I did it for my wife and three kids.”
Ruby Soto, 43, got her test after hearing about the increase.
“Because of the uptick, I figured better safe than sorry,” she said.
But the chief medical officer at NYU Langone Hospital in Sunset Park said he has not seen anything at the hospital to indicate a spike in positive cases.
“We are definitely not seeing it, and we are definitely attuned to it,” said Dr. Joseph Weisstuch. “We have not at all seen an uptick.”
The city has not shared its data with the hospital, he added.
De Blasio noted that while the uptick indicated by city data stems from tests conducted in Sunset Park, not all of those tested are residents of the area.
“It’s not that we have a perfect bead on exactly what’s happening yet,” he said. “The idea is to go and do much more testing to see if it either clarifies that that was an aberrant reality, or shows us something that we can follow up on more distinctly.”
One state lawmaker believes the uptick is connected to delays getting testing up and running during the early months of the pandemic and to increased testing in the area over the last two months.
Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn) said he pushed the city and state to bring testing sites to the area for months, but that the several sites now in Sunset Park only started testing in June and July.
Prior to that, residents in the area could not walk to a testing site, prompting many to stay home, he said.
“It’s expected that cases will go up,” he said. “Testing and tracing has proved exactly what I was talking about in April and May.”
Citywide, coronavirus stats remain relatively low with the percentage of city residents testing positive for the disease at 1%.
De Blasio and city Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi said the plan to root out the cause of the Sunset Park increase will rely on saturating the area with robocalls, getting the word out to community groups and doorknocking residents to encourage them and their families to get tested.
“We’ll turbocharge our activity in the days ahead,” Chokshi said. “We’ll bring two mobile testing vans, each of which can do 80 to 100 tests per day.”
The vans will be stationed in Brooklyn on the corner of 44th St. and Sixth Ave. and outside 809 44th St.
Sunset Park is not the first neighborhood being targeted with what Chokshi described as a “hyperlocal” approach. The first was Tremont, the Bronx.
But it’s unclear how many people who did test positive have isolated themselves. When asked, de Blasio said only that the city has seen a “high level of cooperation.”