Forest Hills COVID Rates Dipping, But Cases Still High: Data

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Weeks after the omicron variant began its alarming surge in New York City, data shows that COVID-19 rates are beginning to dip in Forest Hills and around the five boroughs — though cases remain near all-time highs.

During the seven-day period that ended on Saturday, over 4,100 Forest Hills residents tested positive for the coronavirus — a positivity rate of 26.58 percent.

Those figures would have been stunningly high before Dec. 2021, but they represent a slight drop from previous days. During the week ending on Jan. 1, for instance, the neighborhood's positivity rate stood at 30.36 percent — its highest case rate since Aug. 2020, when the city began releasing local COVID data.

Local health experts have expressed cautious optimism that New York's omicron wave has reached or is nearing its peak, a point that Gov. Kathy Hochul reiterated on Tuesday.

Pointing to last weekend, Hochul said that COVID cases are "plateauing" in New York City; on Sunday, 32,236 people tested positive for COVID in NYC, a shocking number of cases that is still lower than the 50,000 cases per-day that the city was seeing for several weeks.

Hochul said New York City still leads state regions for hospitalizations, but downstate hospitals still have capacity.

As of Sunday, about 655 people were admitted to the hospital on average during the past seven day period — a drop from Jan. 4, when the city was averaging 883 cases per-week, but still far above levels that the city has seen in months.

As the wave continues, more free testing sites are opening up across Forest Hills this week, to meet neighborhood demands for more free, accessible testing.

To find a city-run place to get tested for COVID-19, use the city's official map or visit a walk-in Health + Hospitals site. To get vaccinated or boosted, visit vaccinefinder.nyc.gov.

Patch editors Nick Garber and Matt Troutman contributed to this report.