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The USA as a whole has been dealing with an increase in cases of infection from the delta variant for months, and now Omikron has been added, and has already become the dominant version of the corona virus in the country within a very short time.
“We have never seen this before”
Many other parts of the United States have higher infection rates than the city of New York last week, but the metropolis has already broken its previous records for several days in a row. “We have never seen this before in NYC (New York City),” tweeted de Blasio’s health advisor Jay Varma last Thursday about the rapid increase.
From Wednesday to Saturday of last week alone, the metropolis recorded 42,600 positive tests – compared with fewer than 35,800 in the entire month of November. And on Sunday there were more than 15,000 positive test results. As of December 1, the number of new infections per capita in the city was just over half the average in New York State, and now it is higher than the average.
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New York City is also seeing an increase in hospital stays, but at a much slower rate. In the middle of last week there were around 110 new admissions a day, about twice as many as a month earlier, but still over 100 fewer than a year ago – not to mention the beginning of April 2020, when the number rose to over 1,600 a day . At that time, an average of almost 800 deaths a day were recorded and at the end of January this year 100. In contrast, the number up to the middle of last week was around a dozen a day.
This can currently still be managed well by the hospitals, but they are preparing for possible staff shortages if more employees have to stay at home because of infections or contact with infected people. Wherever possible, services will be switched to virtual to free nurses to care for patients in clinics with bottlenecks, says Mitchell Katz, who manages the city’s public health system.
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But despite all the differences to 2020, there are still some parallels. So the city is weighing whether it can pull off a popular traditional event – the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square. So it was last spring with the St. Patrick’s Day parade. And residents are thinking again about what activities they can do without putting their health at risk.
Sheldon Rogers works for a technology company and recently attended a Christmas party with colleagues. After a Covid outbreak shortly thereafter, he spent three hours waiting in line to get tested at a private Brooklyn facility. But at least he was lucky: the result was negative.