Lack Of Data Plagues Lawmakers In Queens Coronavirus Hotspots

ASTORIA, QUEENS — City Council Member Costa Constantinides found out about a spike in the rate of people testing positive for the coronavirus in his Astoria district the same way that many of his constituents did.

He saw the statistic on the NYC Department of Health's data portal. Then, he read about it in the news.

The seven-day COVID-19 positivity rate, which measures the percentage of positive tests, has surged well above the rolling citywide average in parts of Queens, according to data released by the city.

Yet lawmakers in Richmond Hill and Astoria, home to the highest and third-highest rates in the city, told Patch they have been hamstrung in their efforts to curb the spread by near-silence from the city's contact tracers, who are tasked with tracking down close contacts of anyone who tests positive for the virus.

"The New York City Test & Trace Corps has not been forthcoming with its findings and that is incredibly frustrating for all of us, elected officials and the public alike," Constantinides wrote in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday, which was obtained by Patch. "Thus far, the Corps has not disclosed where positive cases have been contracted nor how they’re spreading. We’re not being told in concrete terms whether particular business industries or activities are contributing more to the spread than others."

As of Friday, Richmond Hill's 11418 ZIP code had the city's highest positivity rate: Nearly 6.5 percent of coronavirus tests have come back positive, according to city data.

Astoria's 11105 ZIP code ranks third-highest, after Tottenville in Staten Island, with a 4.8 percent positivity rate. (Though the data was updated Friday, there is a lag in reporting; rates cited in this article are from the period from Nov. 3 to Nov. 9.)

Citywide, the positivity rate hit 2.8 percent as of Friday, according to de Blasio.

A spokesperson for City Council Member Adrienne Adams, whose district includes part of the Richmond Hill ZIP code with the highest positivity rate, said their office has experienced a similar lack of communication from the contact tracing team. They received no advanced notice of the uptick in the district, the spokesperson said.

A Test & Trace Corps spokesperson said the team publishes weekly reports on tracing demographics and data, as mandated by the City Council, but the reports include no information on suspected transmission sources or locations.

"When the Test & Trace Corps was launched, we promised to build a fair, transparent program for New Yorkers who are relying on our evidenced approach to help the City to recover from this virus," Karla Griffith, a spokesperson for the city's hospital system, wrote in an emailed statement. "We’ve done just that and are still committed to this promise by sharing information and resources freely with full data transparency."

Griffith's response did not directly address a question about the Test & Trace Corps' protocol for notifying local lawmakers about upticks in their districts.

In an email to Patch, Test & Trace Corps representatives defined the team's role narrowly — as identifying contacts who may have been exposed to the coronavirus and helping them quarantine.

A Test & Trace Corps spokesperson also noted that the NYC Department of Health is the one putting out the the ZIP code-level data on positivity rates.

De Blasio entrusted oversight of the Test & Trace Corps to NYC Health + Hospitals, the city's public hospital system, rather than the Department of Health, due to an internal feud with the department and its commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, POLITICO New York reported. Barbot resigned several months later.

Patch has reached out to the NYC Department of Health for comment and is awaiting a response.

But the Test & Trace Corps has played an integral role in the city's response to hyper-local upticks in COVID-19 cases, most recently in Staten Island, where 70 staffers were dispatched to do "substantial" outreach, in the words of Test & Trace Corps Executive Director Ted Long.

In interviewing those who test positive, contact tracers also identify where those people have been, enabling the Test & Trace Corps to catch localized upticks early, Long said.

"If there is an uptick or an increase in the level of the virus anywhere, we will know about it early, and we can then intervene immediately and decisively," Long said on Nov. 5. "Our intervention is our hyper-local response."

That's exactly the kind of information Constantinides is looking for, and he said a weekly report doesn't cut it.

“The problem right now is we don’t know how cases are increasing, nor is the City deploying enough resources to areas where there’s a spike” Constantinides told Patch through a spokesperson. “A 4.81% positivity rate should send up flares that we must address this issue, instead of waiting for a weekly report. People’s lives are on the line, so City agencies must work together to determine what’s causing the surge, inform the public, and deploy resources to keep them safe. Anything short of that will lead to more lives lost.”

Representatives for Constantinides and Adams said they could more effectively deploy resources and outreach efforts if the city provided specifics on where people are testing positive and communal locations that may have played any role.

City health officials have disclosed little information about what is leading to COVID-19 upticks, in part because, in more than half of cases, contact tracers haven't been able to identify a clear source of transmission.

About 10 percent of cases have been linked to travel, and another 5 percent can be tied to indoor gatherings, senior public health adviser Jay Varma told reporters this week.

The others still carry a question mark.

Meanwhile, New York City lingers on the precipice of a second wave of the pandemic.