As NYC Vaccinates 83% of Adults, Hospitalization Rate Falls to Lowest Levels: since Beginning of the Pandemic

By Yehudit Garmaise

         Thanks to the six million, out of 8.8 million, New Yorkers who have gotten vaccinated, the city’s hospitalization rate for COVID, which at 0.69%, per 100,000, is the lowest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic, said Mitch Katz, MD, the CEO of Health + Hospitals.

     As of today, because 83% of adults and 75% of teenagers in the city have gotten their shots, Mayor de Blasio called New York City, “the safest place in the country, when it comes to COVID.

     “This low hospitalization rate really says that vaccination works, and that we are moving in the right direction.

     “No longer do people have to have that fear so many families have had, of loved ones, particularly seniors, ending up in the hospital and never coming back. That is what vaccination is doing.”

     “For the 11 Health + Hospitals, which represent one-fifth of all hospitalization in New York City, we currently have 70 patients with COVID in the hospital, and about 16 of them are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU),” pointed out Dr. Katz. “At the peak of COVID, we had 3,700 in the hospital with COVID, and we had 960 in the ICU.”

     Dr. Katz called the city’s decline in hospitalizations “huge progress and the best numbers we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic.”

     In fact, Dr. Katz, who said, every week, he reviews the admissions due to COVID at Health + Hospitals, every week, for the last several weeks, he said, the number of COVID admissions has decreased.

     “That is objective evidence that the most profound impacts of the vaccine are in preventing people from getting sick,” Dr. Katz said,

     “The best explanation for [the sharp decline in hospitalizations] is the impact of vaccinations,” said Jay Varma, MD, of the mayor’s top health advisors, who added that as winter comes in, the city needs to continue to “build its reserve of immunity.

     Dr. Katz, however, does not believe that COVID is going to go away any time soon.

     “I believe the virus will continue to circulate, but if we are all vaccinated, then we are all going to stay healthy.

     For instance, after seeing in his lab records that one of his patients, who had been vaccinated, had tested positive for COVID, Dr. Katz called her to check to see how she was feeling.

     “She said, ‘I feel just great. I have a slightly stuffy nose.’

     “I think that is likely to the be future of a fully vaccinated city,” Dr. Katz said. “There is still going to be some circulating COVID, which will circulate more in the winter [when people gather more indoors], but if we are all vaccinated, we will all stay healthy.”  

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.