NEW YORK – Just a few weeks ago, New York City appeared to be in control in the fight against the coronavirus. But New York is now a hotspot in the United States, facing a skyrocketing case count, a race for testing, a dilemma over a potential major crisis and a grueling sense of déjà vu.
A wave of cases fueled by the Omicron variant is sweeping through the country’s most populous city, which was hit hard at the start of the pandemic. While health officials say there are significant reasons to believe New York will not relive the spring 2020 scenario, some Broadway shows have abruptly canceled performances, requiring the mask to be worn. interior is back and testing is hard to find.
“It’s disappointing that we didn’t develop a better system and were not better prepared for another wave,” Jordan Thomas said on Monday as he waited for four hours to get a drug test in a health clinic near downtown Brooklyn.
With temperatures approaching freezing, Nina Clark has joined the line for the third time since her symptoms began on Thursday. Once again, she ended up leaving before she got a test.
“I stood there in the cold and said, ‘I can’t do this,’” she said. “Everywhere you go, there is a line.”
As officials and health experts urged people to not only get tested, but also get a booster dose of the vaccine, an hour-long queue for either ended. trained in a private pharmacy in lower Manhattan.
“I’m just trying to stay optimistic,” said Inga Chen while awaiting a callback.
New York City closed some testing centers last month due to lower demand and replaced them with mobile testing trucks. She must now correct her course and once again increase her scouting capacity. The 130,000 daily tests at City-funded sites are already double what it did just three weeks ago, and Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that New York would add 20 fixed locations and three vans this week. It also plans to distribute 500,000 rapid home test kits.
Dr Mitchell Katz, who heads the New York City Public Hospital System, said officials did not expect “so much news on Omicron” or a shortage of home testing. Meanwhile, smaller testing sites encountered staffing issues over the weekend as the workers themselves contracted the virus, he added.
Dr Katz said the City will now ensure workers are ready to replace those who are sick and take other steps to alleviate the testing shortage.
The United States is facing both the rise of Omicron and a multi-month wave fueled by the Delta variant, and many other parts of the country have reported significantly higher infection rates than in the city of New York over the past week. But the speed of the assault on the Big Apple is shaking health experts, even after nearly two years of virus-related surprises.
“We’ve never seen this before in NYC,” the mayor’s public health adviser Dr Jay Varma tweeted Thursday, referring to the increase in the rate of positive tests in the previous days.
Nearly 42,600 people across the city tested positive Wednesday through Saturday, compared to less than 35,800 for the entire month of November. The city has never had so many people tested positive in such a short time since testing became widely available; there is no clear picture regarding the number of people who contracted the virus during New York’s first wave in spring 2020.
Hospitalizations have also increased, although much more slowly. New admissions citywide were on average around 110 per day until the middle of last week, about double the number a month earlier. But the average around this time last year was around 230, and it topped 1,600 in early April 2020.
The average number of deaths per day was then approaching 800 compared to 100 at the end of January of this year. The number of deaths per day is currently fairly stable, it was at about a dozen, as of the middle of last week.
Hospitalizations and deaths tend to follow cases by increasing and decreasing. But scientists note that in South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first identified, an increase in the number of cases has not been followed by a commensurate increase in hospitalizations and deaths.
New York hospitals say they have seen modest but manageable increases.
For example, Northwell Health, the state’s largest private health care system, had around 400 COVID-19 positive patients as of Friday at its nearly twenty hospitals in and around New York City, Dr. John D’Angelo said. , head of the integrated service. The number was up from around 300 a few weeks ago, but it is only a fraction of the 1,350 hospitalizations recorded last January and 3,500 in early spring 2020.
In addition, COVID-19 patients today, in general, do not need to stay as long as in previous waves, according to Dr. Katz and Dr. Fritz François, head of hospital operations at NYU. Langone Health system.
Yet hospitals are bracing for staff shortages as infections or exposures force staff members to stay home. Dr Katz said almost all public system clinics are switching to virtual consultations so some nurses can be transferred to hospitals and testing sites.
“We know how to do this. We are ready, ”he said during a virtual press conference with the Democratic mayor.
In some ways, there is no comparison to the terrifying first wave of the virus, when no one was vaccinated, masks were almost absent in New York City and clinicians were just starting to learn how to treat COVID-19. .
Yet some public health experts say officials in New York and elsewhere have yet to learn how to deal with the pandemic.
“We’re seeing an under-reaction, continually,” said Dr. Stanley Weiss, professor of epidemiology at Rutgers University. He thinks authorities should immediately redefine “fully vaccinated” to include boosters; limit indoor public spaces to vaccinated people, offer the third dose and constantly oblige the mask; and improving indoor ventilation, among other steps.
Whatever the differences, there are still some echoes of 2020.
The city administration is wondering if it can continue a beloved tradition – this time, the celebration of the New Year in Times Square, instead of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2020. And residents are once again struggling with problems. decisions about daily activities that suddenly seem risky.
Sheldon Rogers went to his “office party” earlier this month, thinking he finally seemed safe to celebrate with colleagues at the tech company where he works.
After an outbreak at the party, he spent nearly three hours waiting for a drug test result Wednesday at a private emergency care center in Brooklyn.
“It reminded a little of the first days of the pandemic,” he reflected on Monday after being declared negative.
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