NYC COVID Cases Plunge As Thanksgiving Nears, Data Shows

NEW YORK CITY — Vaccinations could gift New York City with low coronavirus cases this holiday season.

COVID-19 infections in the city have fallen nearly every day since mid-September — and the daily average of new cases dropped 86 percent during that time, data shows.

The plunge is all the more dramatic when compared to the same point last year, when cases were in the midst of a 184 percent climb that run through the holidays and peaked at a pandemic-high daily 6,350 cases in early January.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has repeatedly credited vaccinations with helping bring coronavirus cases into check. He said vaccine mandates have only helped the city recover from the pandemic faster.

"It happened with lightning speed in this city, and now it's made us safer," he said last week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "And now things are coming back to life. We've got to end the COVID era. We've got to end it once and for all."

But the city's recovery could be tested by the upcoming holidays.

De Blasio and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year warned New Yorkers against holding indoor gatherings for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas for fear those could fuel a "holiday surge" in COVID-19 cases.

The coronavirus is a "Grinch," Cuomo said as he outlined measures to avoid overcrowded hospitals.

COVID-19 cases weren't the only measures that rose during the holidays last year.

Hospitalizations and deaths both ticked upward and lingered at high levels for weeks after the holidays, according to data.

Nearly 400 New Yorkers were hospitalized and 84 died on average a day at the post-holiday surge's peak, data shows.

Those numbers, as well as cases, dropped through the spring and early summer this year as weather warmed and COVID-19 vaccinations took off. But they rose again in July and August as the highly contagious delta variant of coronavirus spread.

But increasingly strict coronavirus mandates unveiled starting in August appear to have coincided with a drop in overall cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to data.

Enforcement on a proof vaccination mandate for indoor dining and other activities, for example, started the week of Sept. 13. The daily average of COVID-19 cases has dropped nearly every day since then.