NEW YORK STATE OF ALARM
Highest rate of COVID+ tests in six months
New York state saw its highest rate of positive COVID-19 tests in six months over the weekend, Gov. Cuomo said on Sunday — as the nation recorded its most hospitalizations from the virus since the start of the pandemic.
Of 157,320 coronavirus test results reported on Saturday in the state, 6,723 were positive — for a rate of 4.27 percent, up from 3.9 percent the day before, Cuomo said.
“This is a new phase for COVID. You want to call it the winter phase. You want to call it the holiday phase. You want to call it the surge upon surge phase,” Cuomo told reporters on a conference call. “That’s where we are.”
The state last hit 4.2 percent on May 20, according to its Web site. It went over 4.2 percent on May 18.
The governor has said the positive-test-rate figure is the most accurate in terms of predicting worrisome potential spikes.
“If you look at New York relative to only New York, you see the numbers going up. Not as fast as in other states, but the numbers are going up,” Cuomo said.
New York City’s latest rolling seven-day average of daily positive tests was 3.9 percent, Mayor de Blasio said on Sunday.
Meanwhile, more people were hospitalized for the coronavirus nationwide on Saturday than ever before — with 91,635 patients admitted for the virus, data showed.
The new high on Saturday came after hospitalization numbers dipped Friday for the first time in 30 straight days, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
“Hospitalizations have gone up every day since Oct. 25 except for [Friday], and [Friday’s] decrease was probably related to holiday data reported on a one-day delay,” the group wrote on Twitter.
Hospitalizations rose slightly in the Empire State, too, with 85 more patients admitted on Saturday than the day prior, bringing the total to 3,372, Cuomo said.
The governor said 55 people were reported to have died from COVID-19 on Saturday.
He said the state would be revealing its “winter plan,” or “nextphase plan,” to keep the virus in check starting Monday.
In total, the US has reported more than 13.3 million cases, including more than 266,000 deaths, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
There have been at least 4 million cases so far in the month of November, more than double the previous record of 1.9 million cases set in October, The New York Times reported.
US Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Sunday warned that the pandemic will “get worse” in the coming weeks.
“I want to be straight with the American people. It’s going to get worse over the next several weeks,” Adams said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But the actions that we take in the next several days will determine how bad it is or whether or not we continue to flatten our curve.”
He urged Americans to keep wearing masks and practicing social distancing.
“We are mere weeks away from starting to vaccinate the vulnerable, and we can significantly protect people who are at risk for the virus, so hang on just a little bit longer,” Adams said.