NYC Hospitalizations Tick Up As COVID Surges, Omicron Spreads

NEW YORK CITY — A staggering surge of COVID-19 cases in New York City is fueling an uptick in hospitalizations, especially among the unvaccinated, data shows.

The city is in for "an intense few weeks" as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads through the boroughs, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

He again predicted the variant will burn itself out eventually — a prognosis based off its spread in South Africa — but warned that will be later than sooner.

“It’s going to be a challenging few weeks, there’s no question about it,” he said. “We’re seeing a big upsurge in cases. Thankfully, in general, they seem more mild and thankfully our health care system is well-positioned to deal with it.”

Hospitals admitted 200 patients Monday — a sharp uptick from Nov. 1 when the city averaged 34 hospitalizations a day, data shows.

Health officials warn that even though the omicron variant appears to cause more mild cases overall, its highly transmissible nature will cause many more infections and, thus, higher numbers of hospitalizations.

And hospitalizations are indeed on the rise in the city, even weeks before the omicron variant accounted for an estimated 92 percent of cases.

The overall weekly hospitalization rate stood at 7.35 per 100,000 people the week of Dec. 4, data shows.

But there's a dramatic gulf in weekly hospitalizations between people who are vaccinated and those are unvaccinated. Unvaccinated New Yorkers have a weekly hospitalization rate of 40.12 per 100,000 people, a number 13 times higher than those who are vaccinated, according to data.

Vaccinated New Yorkers had a hospitalization rate of 2.99 per 100,000 people, data shows.