NYC Nears 6% COVID Positivity As Omicron Subvariant Spreads: Data

NEW YORK CITY — The coronavirus won’t quit New York City, despite city dwellers’ deep desire to put the pandemic behind them.

COVID-19 positivity and daily case numbers in the city both continued a worrisome upward creep, according to recent data.

Positivity stands at 5.79 percent as of Monday — a seven-day average not seen since February, according to city health data. The city also twice recently saw daily cases surpass 3,000, state data shows.

Likewise, the city hasn’t seen daily detected cases above 3,000 since February.

The rise in cases — likely fueled by the omicron subvariant BA.2 — prompted health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan to warn that the city’s COVID-19 alert status could change from “low” to “medium.”

“In the next few days, likely by early next week, we’re going to be entering a new level of risk, moving from a low-risk environment to a medium-risk environment on the basis of cases,” he said on April 15.

But Vasan’s predicted alert change hasn’t yet materialized.

Indeed, some key COVID-19 indicators could be showing that the BA.2 surge is leveling off.

Jay Varma, a former senior health adviser for the city, tweeted case numbers that show more of a plateau than a sharp increase.

“Critical caveat: does not yet include enough data from recent days to reflect exposures that may have occurred over last holiday weekend,” he tweeted April 22.

Visits to emergency rooms for COVID-like illnesses and hospitalizations in general have remained “stable,” Varma also tweeted. But he noted that hospitalizations among unvaccinated New Yorkers remain high.

The hospitalization rate for unvaccinated New Yorkers stands at 36.85 per 100,000 people, data shows. By contrast, it’s 6.0 per 100,000 among those who are vaccinated and boosted, according to data.