Infection Rate As High As 17% In NYC Coronavirus Hotspots: Cuomo

BROOKLYN, NY — Infection rates in New York City neighborhoods seeing a surge in coronavirus cases reached as high as 17 percent on Sunday, more than eight times that of the rest of the city, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The governor warned during a briefing Monday that several New York ZIP codes — including four in Brooklyn and one in Queens — are responsible for an uptick in the state's daily infection rate, which jumped to 1.5 percent as of Sunday. The state's infection rate had hovered at or below 1 percent since August.

The ZIP codes are part of coronavirus "clusters" that have appeared in Brooklyn, Orange County and Rockland County.

“Those top 10 zip codes represent 2.9 percent of the state’s population and 25 percent of the cases,” he said.

The highest infection rate appeared to be in the Rockland County cluster, where 30 percent and 25 percent of people tested for the coronavirus in two ZIP codes, respectively, came back positive, according to Cuomo.

Brooklyn's positivity rate was as high as 17 percent in one ZIP code covering Borough Park, where city officials have warned of a case uptick since August. Twenty-six of the 155 people tested in the ZIP code on Sunday were positive for coronavirus, according to the governor's office.

The upticks led Cuomo to send 200 rapid testing machines to the clusters, he announced Monday.

"This is the point of the testing we're doing, to be able to pinpoint and identify the clusters to find where the cases are coming from," he said.

New York City's overall positivity rate as of Monday was 1.93 percent, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The state's ZIP-code level numbers are different from data from the New York City's Health Department, which showed eight neighborhoods with "alarming" increases all below a 7 percent infection rate.

The discrepancy appears to be because the city uses a 14-day average when reporting infection rates while the state data is for a one-day period.

Here are the infection rates from the top ZIP codes, according to Cuomo:

• Rockland
  • 10977, 30 percent positive
  • 10952, 25 percent positive
• Orange
  • 10950, 22 percent
• Kings
  • 11219, 17 percent
  • 11210, 11 percent
  • 11204, 9 percent
  • 11230, 9 percent
• Queens
  • 11367, 6 percent

City health officials contended Monday that their two-week model "can more accurately reflect sustained trends than data pulled from a single day."

According to their numbers, the average infection rate stands at 5.26 percent in Borough Park's 11219, 4.08 percent in the Flatlands/Midwood's 11210, 5.15 percent in Bensonhurst/Mapleton's 11204, 5.53 percent in Midwood's 11230 and 3.04 percent in Kew Gardens Hills/Pomonok's 11367.

The city's health department said last week that a new round of coronavirus lockdowns could be coming to the ZIP codes should the upticks not improve. Officials plan to decide by Monday whether the shutdown measures are necessary.

Cuomo encouraged private schools in those ZIP codes to request rapid testing machines for coronavirus. Those will be made available Monday and Tuesday, he said.

“We have 200 machines that we have earmarked for those clusters,” he said.