What's New

  • Welcome back to our new and improved COVID-19 stats page! Now with added wastewater data for New York state, which estimates COVID-19 transmission based on the concentration of the virus in sewage. We’ve opted to focus on wastewater and hospitalizations over case data, which has gotten less and less reliable as people switched to at-home testing.
  • Wastewater and hospitalization data both suggest that we’re in the midst of another winter COVID-19 wave. Transmission is up compared to pre-Thanksgiving levels, about on par with this time last year.
  • The uptick in COVID-19 cases is joined by a surge in other respiratory nasties, including RSV and the flu. New York City has earned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s second-highest rating on its scale for respiratory virus activity, based on doctor’s office and ER visits.
  • A new contender has emerged from the long-simmering alphabet soup of variants: JN.1. The immunity-dodging cousin to this past fall’s BA.2.86 is driving the latest spike in transmission, health authorities say, but it isn’t more likely to cause severe disease than any of its predecessors.
  • Because the city Health Department stopped sharing vaccination data in September, there’s not much information on the popularity of the new COVID-19 shot in our region. The CDC says about 13% of adult New Yorkers have gotten the latest jab, which scientists say offers good protection against severe disease from the newest variants.

The charts, tables and maps on this page refresh with the latest data daily or weekly, but we only update the article’s text occasionally. The most recent text update happened on Jan. 4.

Want different metrics on this page? Please send any questions or comments to SciHealthData@wnyc.org.

Recent Trends

COVID-19 transmission has climbed steadily since the Thanksgiving holiday, according to hospitalization and wastewater data.

New York City’s hospitalization rate is elevated compared to summertime figures, but it hasn’t quite caught up to last winter’s peak. New York City Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system, reinstated its mask mandate in late December, the New York Daily News reported.

Vaccinations

In late September, the NYC health department announced it would no longer share up-to-date vaccine totals on its website. That means there’s no data available from the city on the uptake of the new monovalent shots, which became available last this fall. But the CDC estimates that just over 13% of adult New Yorkers have opted for the updated vaccines.

New York City’s vaccine campaign started in December 2021 with early hiccups, caused mostly by inclement weather and limited federal supplies of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Since then, though, most New Yorkers have opted for at least the initial course of vaccines. The boosters have been less popular, however, especially 2022’s batch of bivalent shots that were designed to fight omicron.

Original vaccination rates still vary widely among neighborhoods — from 55% in Borough Park to 100% in Midtown Manhattan. Uptake of the bivalent boosters, meanwhile, reached 50% in only one neighborhood: the financial district in Lower Manhattan. Citywide, Black and white New Yorkers’ vaccination rates lag behind other groups, and young children are also under-vaccinated.

Variants

In recent weeks, the usual alphabet soup of strains have given way to a new dominant variant, JN.1. The new strain, a cousin of BA.2.86, is driving the latest spike in cases, CDC scientists say.

Research suggests that the COVID-19 vaccines may not be as effective against infections caused by the delta and omicron variants, but the drugs can still protect against severe disease, especially after boosters. Hospitalizations and deaths are lower for people, including children, who take updated vaccines.

NYC Pandemic Over Time

COVID-19 Pandemic In New York, New Jersey And Connecticut

Last year, the CDC updated its COVID-19 guidance to recommend universal masking only when hospital admissions are very high and hospital capacity is limited. As of late December, that designation doesn’t apply anywhere in the tri-state area. But hospital admissions are increasing dramatically across the region, data shows, suggesting that the situation could change in the coming weeks.