71 People Have Died In Astoria, LIC During Omicron Wave

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Cases of COVID-19 are dropping steeply in Western Queens and around the city, but the contagious omicron variant still claimed dozens of lives in the neighborhood.

A total of 71 residents of the six ZIP codes that comprise Astoria and Long Island City died from COVID-19 between Dec. 31 and Jan. 27, according to city data. The ZIP code seeing the most fatalities was 11105 in Ditmars-Steinway, where 21 residents died in recent weeks.

That was followed by Long Island City's 11101 ZIP code, where 15 people died, and by 11102 and 11103 in Astoria, which each lost 14 residents. The 11106 ZIP code in Dutch Kills lost seven people, while only the small 11109 ZIP code on the Long Island City waterfront saw no deaths in that span.

Those Western Queens residents were among the more than 2,800 New Yorkers who died from COVID-19 during the same period. The 28-day window covers the period starting about two and a half weeks after the omicron spike began in mid-December.

As a function of population, Western Queens was relatively hard-hit by the recent wave: Ditmars-Steinway's 11105 ZIP ranks 11th in the city in deaths per 100,000 residents, according to Health Department data.

Meanwhile, 267 residents of Western Queens were hospitalized with COVID-19 during that period.

But data also shows marked improvement in the battle against the contagious variant.

During the seven-day period that ended on Monday, 209 Western Queens residents tested positive for COVID-19: a rate of about 3.5 percent. While that's higher than the figures seen in the neighborhood during most of 2021, it is a huge drop from the previous few weeks.

In the last week of December, for example, more than 3,900 people tested positive in the same ZIP codes — a rate of 30.9 percent.

After an initial period of cautious optimism when rates began dropping in early January, leaders are now talking openly about the encouraging trends.

"Not only is New York City winning in the fight against COVID-19, but we are bringing even more help right to New Yorkers' front doors to continue beating this pandemic," Mayor Eric Adams said in a recent statement, referring to a new effort to deliver antiviral pills to residents.

Similar trends are holding across New York state, whose positivity rate dropped below 10 percent last month for the first time since December.

Elsewhere in the U.S., hospitals have been overwhelmed by a surge in patients caused by omicron, and deaths have continued to mount even as overall cases slow down.

Meanwhile, large majorities of people in Astoria and Long Island City have gotten vaccinated — greatly reducing their risk of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19. All Western Queens ZIP codes have at least 75 percent of residents fully vaccinated, with Long Island City's two ZIP codes both reporting rates above 99 percent.

Patch reporter Anna Quinn contributed.