Long Island COVID-19 seven-day positivity rate below 4%, lowest in 3 months, state figures show
Maria Molina, 41, of Greenport, receives her first dose of the Moderma vaccine at the Cutchogue Fire Department in Cutchogue on Feb. 6. Credit: Randee Daddona
Long Island’s seven-day COVID-19 positivity rate fell Friday to its lowest level in nearly three months, as the omicron-fueled surge continues to subside, state data released Saturday shows.
Meanwhile, a day after two court rulings upheld New York City’s public-employee vaccine mandate, experts said such requirements were still helpful in controlling the spread of the coronavirus.
The 3.79% of coronavirus test results that came back positive on Friday is the lowest percentage since Nov. 17, when COVID-19 numbers were climbing as cold weather was pushing more people into higher-risk indoor venues and the highly contagious delta variant was spreading. Within weeks, the more contagious omicron variant eclipsed delta and the positivity rate soared to nearly 27% by early January. It’s been falling since then.
"New Yorkers should be proud of our continued progress in bringing down the numbers since the Omicron peak in January, but this is no time to let up," Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Saturday, before urging New Yorkers to get themselves and their children vaccinated.
Long Island had 501 newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases Friday, 251 in Suffolk and 250 in Nassau.
New York City again had the state’s lowest seven-day positivity rate: 2.21%.
The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations on Long Island also fell, from 661 on Thursday to 598 on Friday. That’s the first time hospitalizations on the Island dropped below 600 since Dec. 18.
Sixty New Yorkers died of COVID-19 on Friday, including seven Suffolk and six Nassau residents.
Even as the positivity rate drops, New York City has no plans to drop its vaccine mandate for indoor premises like restaurants, gyms and concert halls, and the restriction continues indefinitely.
And, Mayor Eric Adams has said, his administration has set no infection metric or metrics below which the mandate could be ended, as Boston and other municipalities have done.
Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist who served as the city’s top pandemic adviser during its first two years, tweeted Thursday: "We don’t know what the virus will do next, we don’t know how long immunity will last (from infection & vaccination), & we don’t have vaccines fully FDA approved for kids. So, for now, there is no metric … Is there a metric to stop airport security screening? Is there a metric for police to stop wearing bulletproof vests? Where a threat is substantial, persistent, & rapidly changing its way of attacking you, you don’t stop defending yourself."
With the city's vaccine mandate for public employees upheld again, officials are preparing to fire thousands of unvaccinated employees.
Sean Clouston, an associate professor of public health at Stony Brook University, said vaccine mandates were especially needed because, as of Thursday, the state let expire a rule that most businesses require either vaccines or masks.
"We have risk, but now no mask mandates to mitigate that risk," Clouston said. "So you have to mitigate it somehow else. That’s where vaccine mandates are really critical."
Moreover, he said, "The people who don’t want to get vaccinated are the same people who don’t want to wear masks."
Unvaccinated adults in December were three times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than adults considered fully vaccinated, and five times more likely to than fully vaccinated adults with a booster shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Although COVID-19 numbers are improving, "cases are still really high," about where they were during part of the fall delta surge, Clouston said.
Dr. Steven Carsons, director of the Vaccine Center at NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island in Mineola, said many healthy unvaccinated people may only get mildly ill if they get infected. But, he said, they can then transmit the virus to a senior, an immunocompromised person or someone else who is more vulnerable to getting seriously ill.
In addition, he said, it's in unvaccinated people where the virus could mutate into a potentially more dangerous variant.
With Matthew Chayes
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David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.
