Sharon Otterman and Joseph Goldstein
04/28/2021 18:30
Clarín.com
World
Updated 04/28/2021 18:30
After months of persistently high coronavirus cases, New York City appears to have finally reached a tipping point.
The second wave in the city is waning, half a year after it started.
This was declared Tuesday by the New York City Health Commissioner, Dr. Dave Chokshi.
Throughout April,
virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths decreased
, and epidemiologists attribute this to the
increase in the vaccination rate, as
well as the arrival of warm weather, which draws people outdoors.
From a second wave peak of nearly 8,000 single-day cases in January, New York City
averaged about 2,000 virus cases per day
as of last week.
Public health officials say that by July, if the city stays on its current trajectory, that number could drop below 600 cases a day, perhaps less.
But they also warn that
uneven vaccination coverage
could lead to a situation where the virus persists in some corners of the city, but not others.
Inhabitants of New York leave a vaccination center after receiving their dose against the coronavirus.
Photo: AFP
Inequalities in vaccination
Manhattan, the borough with the highest median household income, is far more vaccinated than the poorest Bronx, reflecting
distrust of vaccines
in some parts of the city and underscoring long-standing disparities in health care that the virus has uncovered.
And there are signs that the pace of vaccines is slowing.
So far, 52 percent of the city's adults have received at least one dose.
"We cannot mistake progress for victory, and these next two months in particular are critical to our vaccination campaign and our goals of reaching as many New Yorkers as we can," Dr. Chokshi said in an interview Tuesday. .
"We are going to redouble our efforts with regard to thinking about access and further ensuring that the vaccine is as accessible as possible," he remarked.
A vaccination center installed in an Islamic cultural center on Staten Island, in New York.
Photo: AP
A long second wave
The second wave in New York has not been as severe as the devastating first wave that hit the city in March and April 2020. But epidemiologists and public health officials are surprised at how long it has lasted.
Since this wave began last fall,
nearly 50,000 New Yorkers have been hospitalized with Covid-19
.
The figure peaked in early January, with nearly 6,500 cases a day on average during the worst week.
Then new infections began to decline, but stabilized at a high of nearly 4,000 new cases per day throughout March.
The case count was flat, but the epidemic was changing.
The vaccines had arrived and the number of vaccines was increasing to tens of thousands every day.
But even as more people gained protection
, the virus became more transmittable
.
Two new variants were rapidly replacing other forms of the coronavirus.
Both were significantly more contagious than last year's virus.
Vaccines and new variants
Public health experts spoke of a tug of war between the variants and the vaccination campaign.
For a time, there was a stalemate.
By the end of March, the variants appeared to be increasing slightly and daily new cases appeared to briefly increase.
Then new case counts began to drop in early April, from nearly 4,000 cases a day at the beginning of the month to about 2,000 a day.
The seven-day positive test rate also declined and is now between 3 and 4 percent, according to city data.
It's the lowest since the fall, but still much higher than its low of 1 percent last summer.
Far from the end
More than 1,500 Covid-19 patients remain hospitalized
in New York City, and the death toll in a few days is still around 40.
Epidemiologists and city officials warn that the epidemic is not close to ending in the city, despite promising signs.
Hospitalizations have fallen faster for people 65 and older
, a group prioritized for vaccines early on, than for other groups.
But while some neighborhoods now have positivity rates of less than 1 percent, in others that rate is six or seven times higher.
"I feel good that we are beginning to see an effect of the vaccine on transmission here," said Dr. Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York School of Public Health.
"But we still have a long way to go, and there are so many New Yorkers and so many neighborhoods that are hardest hit by this pandemic that they are being left behind," he said.
The hardest hit areas
Overall, Manhattan has a 1.5 percent positivity rate, and in some wealthy areas, the positivity rate has been below 1 percent for the past seven days.
However,
the virus remains a significant threat in corners of the city such as Sunset Park, Brooklyn
, a largely immigrant neighborhood where a large part of the inhabitants are Latino or Asian.
There, the positivity rate is still 6 percent.
Most contagious strains
The newer and more contagious forms of the virus, notably B.1.1.7., The variant first detected in Great Britain, and B.1.526, the variant first detected in New York, accounted for more than 75 percent. percent of cases analyzed in this city in the week beginning April 5, the latest data available.
There was also
a small but worrying increase in the variant first detected in Brazil
, accounting for almost 3 percent of sequenced cases.
That's particularly disturbing because in Brazil this variant has been shown to break immunity from a previous infection.
But in New York City, so far, it appears that the combination of pre-infection immunity and vaccine immunity has prevented a large spike in cases due to variants, like the one that hit Britain after the holidays. of winter.
Cases in the city are now declining even as the proportion of cases that are variants increases.
That is encouraging news for epidemiologists.
There was also positive news from laboratory studies showing that the two main vaccines used in the United States, Pfizer and
Moderna
,
are effective
against the New York variant, which is responsible for about 40 percent of new cases.
Accelerate vaccination
Last summer, in the months after the first wave, the daily case count reached less than 300 on average.
Dr. Chokshi said he anticipated the case count would drop below 550 a day, a threshold the city set as a goal last year, for July.
However, to get there, public health officials say they
must increase vaccination rates across the city
.
Areas with low vaccination rates, they say, could allow for
localized outbreaks
, similar to those the city saw in 2019 with measles.
For that reason, slow, person-to-person efforts to vaccinate people must take center stage.
In early April, it was not uncommon for
100,000 doses of vaccines to be administered a day in
New York City.
But the pace of vaccines has started to slow in the past two weeks.
Distrust of vaccines is a significant factor.
45,000 doses were administered on Monday.
The New York Times, special
CB
Look also
After criticism from Brazil, the manufacturers of the Sputnik V vaccine strike back: "They have no scientific basis"
How Europe sealed a deal with Pfizer with texts and calls