Astoria, LIC NYCHA Tenants Died From COVID At Higher Rates: Data

ASTORIA-LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — People living in northwest Queens’ public housing developments caught COVID-19 and died at higher rates than their neighbors, newly released city data shows.

The data was released by the city’s Health Department this week and first published by Politico after the site reported that the city hadn’t provided data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in NYCHA since May 2020.

The numbers confirm what many had already feared: citywide, residents of the systematically neglected public housing system have contracted and died from the virus at higher rates than other New Yorkers. NYCHA residents in northwest Queens are no exception.

In the Astoria, Ravenswood, Woodside, and Queensbridge Houses, at least 2,009 residents contracted coronavirus between March 2020 and June 2021, when the most recent data is available. 90 of those people died from the virus, records show.

Those infection rates are on-par with the overall rates in the parts of Astoria and Woodside where each development is located, ZIP code based data shows.

Death rates at the four NYCHA developments, however, are 40 percent higher than the death rate in Astoria and Woodside as a whole.

Nearly 4.5 percent of public housing residents in northwest Queens who contracted COVID-19 died of the virus. By contrast, only 3.1 percent of people who contracted coronavirus in Astoria and Woodside overall died from the virus.

That’s one out of every 179 public housing residents who died of the coronavirus compared to one out of every 231 people from the area as a whole.

Some northwest Queens housing complexes were especially hard-hit. At the Queensbridge Houses, the nation's largest public housing complex, nearly 800 people were infected — more cases than in any of the area’s other developments.

Although the infection rate at the Queensbridge Houses was only 1 percentage point more than the development’s ZIP code, 11106, the death rate at the houses was 51 percent higher than the overall area rate.

2.7 percent of people who contracted COVID-19 in the 11106 ZIP code died, compared to 4.1 percent of Queensbridge residents who contracted and died of the virus. That’s out of every 189 Queensbridge residents who caught and died of COVID-19, compared to one out of every 304 people in 11106 who succumbed to the virus.

By percentages alone, the Woodside Houses saw the highest infection and death rates out of all four housing developments. Nearly 15 percent of residents at the housing complex contracted the virus, and of those who got sick with COVID-19 over 5 percent died, amounting to 33 people.

At the Astoria Houses over 5 percent of residents who contracted the virus died, too, amounting to a loss of 18 residents.

Even at the Ravenswood Houses, which saw the lowest infection rate out of all four housing developments, a greater percentage of infected people died of the virus compared to deaths among COVID-19-positive people in the development’s overall ZIP code.

10.9 percent of residents at Ravenswood contracted the virus, which is less than the 13.2 percent of people living in the development’s ZIP code of 11106 who tested positive for coronavirus.

When you look at the death rate, however, the percentage of people who tested positive for COVID-19 and succumbed to the virus at Ravenswood surpasses that of the overall area.

3.7 percent of those who got sick at the development died of the virus, compared to 2.7 percent of people in 11106 who died after contracting COVID-19.

Scroll through the spreadsheet below to see the total numbers for each northwest Queens complex included in the data. The data is grouped by color so that you can compare case and death counts from each housing development and the overall area where it is located. The bottom two rows include data for all four houses, and data for the three ZIP codes where they are located.