As NJ COVID Cases, Hospitalizations Drop, Murphy Warns Against Complacency

NEW JERSEY — While COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are continuing to drop daily in New Jersey following a surge earlier this month, Gov. Phil Murphy warned residents not to let their guards down.

As of Wednesday, 8,467 new cases are being reported which is significantly lower than the state's pandemic record of 33,479 cases on Jan. 7. This also shows a continued decline from last week when New Jersey reported 19,544 cases on Jan. 12 and 19,545 on Jan. 13.

"While it appears the Omicron tsunami is finally pulling back, we are in no position to say we are on dry ground," said Murphy during a news conference on Wednesday, announcing the new daily case count.

"I resist the urge to use the word 'only' with this number — even though it is thankfully lower than what we've been seeing earlier this month — it is still up there with the highest daily totals we were seeing at any peaks of the prior surges," said Murphy.

Murphy also noted that the number of cases is a "dramatic undercount" since there are many residents testing at home and are not reporting those cases.

"We can not look at a fallen number and fall into complacency," the governor said. "Omicron inundated us once we do not want to see that happen again. And it can if we let our guards down."

New Jersey hospitals are also reporting a drop in patients with 5,152 confirmed or suspected COVID-19 as of Wednesday.

While that's less than Friday's reported total of 5,835, the state still has a long way to go before matching its number of hospital patients with the virus from a month before (1,698 on Dec. 13) and two months ago (679 on Nov. 13).

While the total number of hospital patients is down, Murphy said the ICU count stayed "sort of static."

As of Wednesday, there are 844 patients in intensive care and of those 519 patients require ventilators. These numbers have remained "steady," said Murphy.

"I can not underscore that this virus remains potentially deadly as well," said Murphy.

There were 145 confirmed deaths due to COVID on Wednesday.

State officials continued to urge residents to be vaccinated, boostered and tested. For more information on vaccine or testing locations visit covid19.nj.gov.

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