BUG RATES PLUMMETING
At 2.99%, lowest in state since before holiday surges
New York’s COVID infection rate has reached a new low since the holiday resurgence in cases.
The latest tests came back positive at a rate of 2.99%, according to statewide statistics released by Gov. Cuomo’s office on Sunday. It was the first time the positivity rate fell below 3% since Nov. 23, three days before Thanksgiving.
In the city, the latest average rate of positive tests was 4.41%. It was 3% on Thanksgiving, though it was on the rise at the time.
Statewide, 75 New Yorkers died of COVID on Saturday, bringing the official death toll to nearly 38,000 — among the highest in the country.
“We continue to see a reduction in positivity and hospitalizations throughout the state, which is good news, and this progress is allowing us to reopen the valve on our economy even further,” crowed Cuomo, who has been under fire for his handling of data about fatalities in nursing homes.
“But with the discovery of a
case of the South African variant in the state, it’s more important than ever for New Yorkers to stay vigilant, wear masks, wash hands and stay socially distanced,” he added.
The update came amid nationwide vaccine supply shortages and efforts that have left communities of color behind. While COVID fatality rates in low-income Black and Latino
communities have been five to 10 times higher than in wealthier, majority-white parts of the city, people of color have been getting vaccinated at far lower rates.
Mayor de Blasio visited a vaccination site at a public housing senior center in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on Sunday.
“We’re going to keep being here to make sure that people ... [get] what they need,” he said,
according to a transcript released by his office. “This ... is about equity. It is about creating a recovery for all of us.”
Americans may still have to wear masks in 2022, the country’s leading infectious disease expert said, though he added that life could resume a semblance of normalcy by the fall or winter.
“It is possible that that’s the case,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday on CNN when asked whether mask use will still be necessary next year.
“We’re going to have a significant degree of normality beyond the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year,” he added. “As we get into the fall and winter — by the end of the year … we will be approaching a degree of normality.”
The comments came as COVID-19 infections and deaths were decreasing in New York and the rest of the country as a whole, though concern remained high about new variants of the coronavirus.
Fauci said a return to normalcy depends on “the level of dynamics of virus that’s in the community.”
“If you combine getting most of the people in the country vaccinated with getting the level of virus in the community very, very low, then I believe you’re going to be able to say for the most part [that] we don’t necessarily have to wear masks,” he stated.