COVID positivity rates in New York City have risen back to late January levels as top doctors warn the city could be on the brink of a sixth wave of COVID-19 caused by the
so far “worst version” of the omicron variant.
The city’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate hit 9.94% on Tuesday, the highest since Jan. 24, according to data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Certainly, the number of people actually tested is at a multi-month low, skewing the positivity rate. But citywide transmission rates have risen about 6% in the last week alone, suggesting a legitimate increase in the spread of the virus.
In some parts of Manhattan, positivity rates are now close to 17%, while in eastern parts of Queens they are over 20%.
dr Jay Varma, a Weill Cornell epidemiologist and former top public health adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio during the pandemic, said infections appear to have stabilized at high levels in the city, rather than falling.
“The decline of reported #COVID-19 Cases in NYC has stopped. Reported cases are on a high plateau, meaning actual transmission is very high considering the >20x undercount. This is likely the start of a BA.5 wave,” Varma tweeted.
The BA.5 subvariant of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is of global concern because it evades immunity and is also more easily transmitted. In a much-cited post this week, researcher Eric Topol called BA.5 the “worst version” of omicron ever.
NYS COVID data
Nationwide, COVID numbers are also rising.
After a steady decline for more than a month, hospital admissions surged back above 2,000 in the latest data reported Tuesday. While it’s a small fraction of the nearly 13,000 hospitalized in mid-January, it’s still an abrupt increase.
The worst trend is seen among the youngest victims – the hospitalization rate for children under 1 year old has increased by about 25% in the last week alone.