Newsman: The daily Covid-19 infections case counts in New York City have begun climbing in recent days, for the first time in months as the delta variant gains traction and vaccination rates in some boroughs remain stubbornly low even as the city seems determined to turn the page on the pandemic. The test positivity rate has roughly doubled in two weeks to 1.27% as of Saturday below 0.6 percent on average to about 1.3 percent. The city has now had a streak of days with 400 or more cases.
About 26% of cases tested over the past 4 weeks were classified as B.1.617.2, or delta, a highly contagious variant that was first detected in India and is now the dominant strain in the U.S. Nationally, the U.S. is reporting a seven-day case rate of about 37 cases per 100,000 people, with New York City at about 21. Missouri and Arkansas have the highest rates, at more than 160 per 100,000.
“We’ve seen some increase in cases and positivity, but we’ve also seen hospitalization rates continue to go lower,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week.
De Blasio said the city was watching the data carefully, and the low hospitalization rate was a good sign. On average, about 20 patients have been hospitalized daily citywide, some of the lowest rates since the beginning of the pandemic.
Health officials have said the vast majority of those testing positive have not been fully vaccinated.
The Health Department has not yet released statistics on how many new cases are among people who are fully vaccinated. Data from other countries shows that a full regimen of the vaccines in use in New York offers a high degree of protection against the Delta variant deaths a day on average.
Though those numbers are still low, but the increase has been swift, surprising some epidemiologists and public health officials who had not expected to see cases jump so quickly after remaining level throughout June.
Still, with some 64 percent of adults in the city fully vaccinated, epidemiologists said it was unlikely that the Delta variant would create conditions anywhere near as devastating as the past two waves of Covid-19.
City officials reported thousands of cases per day, and the positivity rate is below the national level of 3.4%. But the trendline is concerning, given the possibility of variants spreading in pockets of the city where fewer residents are vaccinated.
“The spread of the delta variant means that it is perhaps the most dangerous time to remain unvaccinated,” Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, said at a virus briefing Monday. “That’s why we have ensured that our vaccination efforts are proceeding with as much urgency as possible.”
Health commissioner Chokshi said younger, unvaccinated people in Staten Island are a primary cause. Less than half of the population is fully vaccinated, as is the case in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s commitment failed at his goal of vaccinating 5 million New Yorker Health commissioners Chokshi said younger, unvaccinated people in Staten Island are a primary cause. Less than half of the population is fully vaccinated, as is the case in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
By mid-July, only 4.4 million New Yorkers are fully vaccinated or 53% of the population. Meanwhile, the inoculation rate has plummeted to around 16,000 doses a day from more than 100,000 in April.
Staten Island has emerged as a miniature hot spot, with its seven-day positivity rate averaging 2.34% as of July 8, well above the citywide average. The borough’s Great Kills and Silver Lake/St. George neighborhoods had the highest hospitalization rates in the city in the latest 28-day period reported, May 31-June 27.
The hope, if not expectation, had been that the summertime would be a time of few cases. Case counts stayed low in New York last summer as the city emerged from a devastating first wave. That did not change until September, when rising transmission in a few spots in Brooklyn and Queens preceded a citywide increase in cases that eventually became a second wave that The Delta variant is far more contagious than the original form of the virus that swept across the city in March 2020. It is also more contagious than even the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant (which was first detected in Britain and since has been renamed Alpha) that edged out other variants during the city’s long second wave.
The Delta variant was detected in a few cases in New York City in February during the second wave, but really made inroads over the past two months, when there was relatively little virus circulating in the city. By the end of May, it accounted for about 8 percent of the cases sequenced by the city, and by mid-June, more than 40 percent. Yet throughout June, the number of infections stayed low, at about 200 cases a day.
Given how contagious the Delta variant is, experts are not surprised that case counts eventually started climbing. Countries around the world are experiencing a surge as a result of Delta. In the United Kingdom, with a vaccination rate that surpasses that of the United States, cases have soared, but hospitalizations have risen more slowly.
So far, those metrics have remained stable in New York City. The seven-day average number of daily hospitalizations this week has remained under 20. The city has recently seen four or five Covid-related lasted until spring.
For now, the city’s main strategy against Delta is to continue urging the unvaccinated to get vaccinated. But in recent months, the number of doses administered has fallen precipitously.
While vaccination rates are high in the lower half of Manhattan, much of Queens, and parts of Brooklyn, they lag behind elsewhere, especially in Black and ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.
Superspreader events that first seeded the coronavirus in the United States are keeping the pandemic smoldering, with experts pointing to human behavior and social circles as the main drivers. All of these things combined can create a perfect storm, increasing the odds that new transmissions spiral out of control.
,Throughout the pandemic, superspreaders — infected individuals who disproportionately spread the virus to many others — have fueled clusters of infection that often make the virus difficult to contain. In other words, when the coronavirus infiltrates communities, superspreader events are the seminal moments when the pathogen lays siege.
Now, with the more-contagious delta variant of the virus circulating in the United States and around the world, experts warn that without adequate mitigation measures, superspreader events are a major threat to vulnerable communities and risk jeopardizing hard-fought gains to drive down the number of cases.
But even as the pandemic evolves and new variants emerge that are more transmissible or can cause more severe disease, human behavior remains one of the biggest pieces of the equation. The problem persists even as the country nears the milestone of having half of its population fully vaccinated. Overall, the vaccines have helped provide a wall of defense against large outbreaks, but with the highly transmissible delta variant spreading rapidly around the country, areas with lagging vaccination rates are at significant risk
