The Omicron wave has seen to be declining in New York, looking back when positive cases recorded nearly 60,000 cases per day. It pushed hospitals to an edge but New York managed to get the situation under control. The omicron variant was more transmissible than any other variant. Two years into this pandemic, the United States recorded a new peak of positive cases compared to other variants. Luckily, omicron is less severe than other variants, and death rates were recorded less.
New York Overcame The Pandemic And Handled Staffing Issues
This wave-exposed a new weakness in healthcare systems, shortage of hospital staffing. With decreased isolation time to 5 days, health care workers were forced to treat patients restlessly. In just a week, they were handling patients on a larger scale than they can handle. Workers with enough experience treated patients effectively and cut down the death rate. Even though all hospitals were at their limit, they did not break before omicron receded.
Biden’s goal of vaccinating the people, with at least one dose, has helped this wave on an unimaginable scale. CDC’s major three studies about vaccination have shown that vaccinating people is the only better way available to fight coronavirus. Compared to the Covid-19 first wave, this wave has recorded fewer death rates by 6.5 times. Among those 2846 New Yorkers who died in this recent wave, two-thirds of them were unvaccinated. The death Rate among unvaccinated is shown to be 17 times higher than those who are vaccinated.
Previous waves helped the health care workers to gain enough experience to handle pandemic situations. Even though recent waves exhausted them, previous experience about how to limit illness and death has come in handy, which in turn helped the hospitals to handle this huge wave without breaking. This wave-exposed the vulnerability among the hospitals, about the inability to handle sudden increases in patients. Even though rich hospitals took in patients from poorer hospitals, it didn’t help much in the long run.
Many people hope that this wave, be the turning point of this pandemic and hope to return to their normal lives. However, epidemiologists warned that if a new wave variant appears, a combination of both omicron and delta, it’ll be more deadly and severe. They warned not to be optimistic and advised the government to continue with the safety measures and vaccination. Health officials shared their concern about the unsure situation of secondary effects of this wave. There are no clear cases of long covid, post virus symptoms recorded among hospitals.
In New York City, the number of infected people is recorded with mathematical models. Nearly a million cases were reported from December to January, making it difficult to keep a count. Proper testing facilities weren’t installed at all places making it difficult to get tested, some were infected with mild symptoms, all positive cases recorded with home test kits weren’t reported to the government or federal. Columbia University predicted that nearly 49 percent of New Yorkers were infected, given how fast this variant spread through the city. They shared their surprise saying that they weren’t expecting this virus to spread at rapid speed, given how almost many are vaccinated and proper masking protocol.
Children who were returning to school after winter break, when omicron was at a peak, were infected and nearly 25,000 cases were reported. While Omicron is less severe in adults, it can infect children easily, especially those who are unvaccinated. The pandemic strategies developed in the previous wave have come in handy. In the last pandemic, people were trying to handle the pandemic all by themselves, but now they discuss with officials and share their knowledge about the infection with others and help each other.
