New York is experiencing another surge in COVID-19 cases as the winter holiday approaches.
Gov. Kathy Hochul reported 21,027 new cases on Friday in the state, a single-day record. The state’s average case rate has doubled since Thanksgiving to 67 infections per 100,000 residents. In New York City, case rates have increased five-fold since a low point on November 1st, driven almost entirely by unvaccinated people.
On Monday, Hochul instituted a mask-or-vaccination mandate for public indoor spaces. Businesses, houses of worship or any place where people congregate behind walls and under a roof must deploy either a mask requirement or check vaccination records at the door to permit the entry of patrons.
The state's Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett joined WNYC/Gothamist on Thursday to discuss the state of the pandemic and offer advice to New Yorkers about their holiday plans, including tips for holiday parties and students traveling for their winter breaks. Speaking with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson, Bassett said she expects that surge to continue, especially given the emerging spread of the omicron variant. Bassett, who was once New York City’s health commissioner, is advising everyone to get their booster shots if they're eligible, wear masks indoors and get tested for COVID-19 before attending family gatherings over the holidays.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Sean Carlson: Hey doctor, welcome back to WNYC.
Bassett: Pleasure to be back with my old hometown folks.
Speaking of which, city officials say COVID cases have tripled here in recent weeks. How would you describe COVID in New York statewide right now? And where are you seeing the worst impact?
As you say, we had a surge that began over the summer that was related to the delta variant, and then we stepped up various preventive strategies.
Now has come the winter surge, which really began in November. We're seeing hospitalizations go up, the proportion of tests that test positive go up.
There's variation across the state, but using the CDC definition of high transmission, every single county in the state is classified as a high transmission county.
That's why the governor decided to take statewide action on a Friday last week when she implemented a new mandate on masking or vaccination
How much of the increase is due to the spread of omicron? The CDC director and the state department of health website say that that it's accounting for 13% of sequenced cases right now in our region.
Omicron is here. That 13% is an estimate, but every day I'm seeing the omicron case counts go up. Everywhere they've gone up; they've gone up very quickly. So we can expect to see that happening here.
But one thing is certain: wearing masks works. Getting vaccinated, fully vaccinated and adding the booster works.
So we have an uncertain situation, but we have very certain tools. We need to use these tools now.
To that end a question and a hypothetical: What does this all mean for people who are going to things like holiday parties? And would you go to a holiday party right now? If you did, what precautions would you take?
We know that the winter surge is related to the fact that people are more indoors. So if you're in a public indoor place, everybody should be masked or vaccinated.
And it's my advice to all of us that we tailor what we do according to the most vulnerable person in our family group. So for me, we have toddlers who are too young to be vaccinated, and I have a mother who's 93 years old.
So we don't want to have people who we don't know really coming to a family party. We want everybody to be vaccinated. We have a preference for being outdoors, and we all wore masks inside when we weren't eating.
I'm out and about. I ride trains. I ride the subway. Before I go to see my mother, I make sure I have a negative test.
Well, speaking of holidays, another big issue here is college students coming home. Grade schools are going to go on break. So what precautions should they be taking? And if cases do rise a lot amongst kids with people coming home and everything, would you choose to shut down schools?
Well, I can tell you that with your last question, we haven't got there yet. But I know, having spoken to the team here at the health department and to the governor, we know that these tools exists.
For college kids at many higher education settings, students are required to get vaccinated. We now permit boosters for everybody over 18.
So they should all get boosted if they have met the waiting period, which varies depending on which vaccine you got. [Two months for Johnson & Johnson, six months for Moderna and Pfizer.]
And it's not a bad idea to get tested before you go home.
So talking again about the city and its policies here: We've issued a new mandate in New York City for school-aged kids in public places to be wearing masks. The state also obviously issued its mask or vaccine mandate for indoor spaces.
But what about enforcement of that? Because the governor has left that up to individual localities to enforce, but some localities are saying we don't want to do that. So what happens if the honor system doesn't work here?
A lot of public health operates on honor systems. The reason that people don't smoke in restaurants and bars isn't because of a health inspector standing at the door. The people there want to be healthy and be protected. That is the best protection we have.
That said that there is still the tool of the fines. Those are within the power of local health departments. But by and large, the goal is that this will be supported by the people who are in these spaces and who will ask people to follow the rules because we all want to be safe.
