Pandemic ‘End In Sight’: Here’s How COVID-19 Stands In New York

NEW YORK — The “end is in sight” for the pandemic, the World Health Organization said this week, but there are still precautions New York residents should take to live with COVID-19, according to health officials.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows new U.S. cases and hospitalizations are trending downward to the lowest level since the pandemic began. Still, the number of deaths — an average of 357 a day, according to the CDC’s seven-day rolling average, are far above the average of 168 daily deaths for the week ending July 6, 2022. Just three months ago, the average was 258 daily deaths.

In New York, the seven-day average for fatalities related to COVID-19 has remained in the mid- to low 20s since the beginning of September. As of Friday, the state reported 15 deaths.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said Sept. 7 that masks would no longer be required for airports, for-hire vehicles, shelters, correctional facilities, as well as buses, subways and trains. That brought the state’s policies in line with the CDC's recommendations.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer, in announcing that masks would no longer be required on county buses, said the largely steady COVID rates were making the disease part of a collective new reality — not one that impacts day-to-day life as it did two years ago.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing Wednesday after COVID-19 deaths reached their lowest level — 11,000 for the week of Sept. 5-11 — since the pandemic began that the world has never been in a better position to end the pandemic.

“We are not there yet, but the end is in sight,” he said, warning that “now is the worst time to stop running” in the race against the virus.

The United States is seeing “an important shift in our fight against the virus,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said at a briefing earlier this month.

That’s if the virus doesn’t mutate again, making a new omicron-specific booster shot less effective.

“In the absence of dramatically different variants, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy of Infectious Diseases, said at the briefing.

Health officials recommend the new booster shot for all Americans, but especially for people 50 and older and people with underlying health issues.

Just over 79 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, but the number of people who are fully vaccinated with one booster shot drops off significantly, standing at 48 percent.

In New York, 92.1 percent of the total state’s population have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine. Of those 18 and older, the percentage is 95.

Fewer in New York have received the completed series: 78.5 percent of the total population and 88.4 percent of those 18 and older. Even fewer people have gotten a booster. A little more than 53 percent of the eligible population in the Empire State have received a COVID booster.

Hospitalizations are an important metric used by health officials to track the impact of COVID-19 in specific areas. The most current CDC hospitalization forecast says admissions will “remain stable or have an uncertain trend,” with between 1,300 to 7,700 new confirmed admissions likely by the first week in October.

New Yorkers saw three surges of COVID-19 related hospitalizations. The first was 18,825 on April 12, 2020; the second, 9,273 on Jan. 19, 2021 and the third, 12,671 on Jan. 11.

As of Monday, hospitalizations in New York were down to 2,192. The number has continued to fall since July 27.