NYC's COVID Risk Alert Downgraded To 'Medium' As Summer Begins

NEW YORK CITY — New Yorkers got some good news on the first official day of summer: The risk of COVID-19 has fallen.

The city now stands at "medium" risk, health officials announced Tuesday. It is a downgrade from the "high" level officials declared in mid-May amid a weekslong surge in cases.

All major COVID-19 indicators have seen a sustained decrease since then, according to city data. Transmission levels have fallen to 240 cases per 100,000 people — a level not seen since April, data shows.

"We’re grateful to New Yorkers for their continued attention and vigilance as we’ve made our way through to the other side of this wave, and, as a result, we’re pleased to announce that New York has fallen into the ‘medium’ risk category," said Mayor Eric Adams and health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan in a joint statement.

"This surge has taught us a lot about how the virus is currently behaving, and how to prepare for the coming weeks and months."

The now-diminished surge of COVID-19 came as new omicron variants spread and restrictions loosened up in the city.

Daily cases topped 7,000 in early May, and transmission rates — the key factor that health officials use to determine the risk level — stood at nearly 400 per 100,000 people, data shows.

But hospitalizations and deaths never reached high levels — a fact that experts in part attributed to widespread vaccination and other public health measures, such as the availability of drugs like Paxlovid to reduce the severity of COVID-19 infection.

Health officials provided more than 55,000 courses of Paxlovid through home delivery this year, according to health department information.

New Yorkers, however, are still not out of the woods.

The "medium" alert still encourages city dwellers to wear face masks in public indoor settings where the vaccine status of others is not known.