NYC Covid Data Suggest Peak Is Yet to Come, Health Chief Says

(Bloomberg) -- New York City Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi said the Covid data suggests the city hasn't yet hit a peak in the omicron-fueled spike of coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

Cases and hospitalizations are still increasing and “I expect that will continue in the near term, meaning the next days to weeks,” Chokshi said in a Covid briefing on Wednesday.

He said the steepness of the curve appears to be falling, but that could be due to the changes of holiday testing patterns, when fewer people are getting tested. He said the impact of gatherings at New Years could still fuel another uptick and encouraged New Yorkers to continue getting booster doses and to continue to wear masks and social distance.

The seven-day average of positive cases rose to nearly 35% on Jan. 2. The seven-day average of hospitalizations fell to 604 on Jan. 2 from 725 on Dec. 31.

“What we are looking for is a deceleration in the rate of growth and we're not seeing that yet, but that's what I'm looking for in the data to say we may be approaching the peak in the coming weeks,” Chokshi said.

Calling peaks can be risky given Covid-19's unpredictability and cases often trail true infections by days. Google searches in New York City for “Covid symptoms” appear to have topped out, which can be an imperfect indicator of viral prevalence, as data watcher Nate Silver pointed out this week on Twitter.

The seven-day average of emergency department visits with Covid-like illness has also slipped somewhat in all five boroughs in the city, although it's unclear the extent to which the holiday-effect is driving the data. In South Africa, the omicron wave burned out in about 30 days, and New York identified its first case of the variant about a month ago.