COVID-19 is slightly trending up in New York – should we be worried? – Times Union

ALBANY All state-imposed mask mandates have ended, and many COVID-19 protocols impacting the general public have disappeared.

But coronavirus is still present - and has been slowly ticking back up during the past two weeks in New York.

Statewide positivity rates plummeted from a high of 21 percent during the omicron surge in early January to a little under 1.5 percent March 12.

But ever since, COVID-19 has been slowly creeping back in, with a 2.3 percent positivity rate statewide Saturday based on a seven-day average.

And those numbers do not convey what certain parts of the state are experiencing as the low New York City rates pull the entire statewide positivity number down.

Central New York, for example, is seeing almost 9 percent of tests coming back positive, with Onondaga County reaching close to 10 percent as of Friday's data.

The Capital Region is also now higher than the state average, with an increase from 2.2 percent to 3.3 percent of tests coming back positive since March 14.

The widespread use of at-home COVID-19 tests also likely means the positivity rate is higher.

Indoor masking requirements in New York businesses ended Feb. 10. The slight uptick in cases is being felt about three weeks after the school mask mandate outside of New York City was lifted March 2.

There is also a new omicron variant, BA.2, that has taken over about half of positive tests in what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outline as Region 2, which includes New York.

Omicron BA.2 is causing concern in other countries, with the elderly population being heavily impacted in Hong Kong. But experts here have said COVID-19 vaccination and boosters should provide ample protection - and that any surge in this variant is likely to most greatly impact the unvaccinated.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health virologist Andrew Pekosz said in an online Q and A last week that so many people were infected with omicron BA.1 during the surge in the U.S., there is the hope that there is some inherent immunity. He also said those who are boosted are best equipped to handle omicron variants.

"Its amazing how that message just maintains consistency," Pekosz said. "We did have to add the booster to deal with omicron, but at the end of the day, vaccination and boosting are doing a fantastic job of limiting severe disease and an okay job of limiting infection. They really are the tool to get us back to normalcy. "

The CDC has decided to take hospitalizations, and hospital capacity, into account when determining spread. And most of the U.S. is now labeled at "low" risk for COVID-19 - including most of New York.

But there are still hotspots. Franklin County in the North Country is the sole place statewide at "high" coronavirus risk as of Sunday. Neighboring Essex and Clinton counties are in "medium" risk, as is Onondaga and Hamilton counties.

Hospitalizations, an indication of severity of the disease, statewide remain low, at less than five COVID-19 cases per 100,000. As a comparison, at the height of the winter omicron surge, COVID-19 hospitalizations were at about 63 people per 100,000 across New York.

But it typically takes at least a few weeks to see if increasing COVID-19 positivity rates have translated into serious illness when looking at hospitalization data.

In Central New York, the region with the highest positivity rates in the state, hospitalizations have slightly increased since March 16 - the first time COVID-19 hospitalizations have started to trend upward there since late last year.

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COVID-19 is slightly trending up in New York - should we be worried? - Times Union