Hospitalization Rates Continue to Fall, City Slowly Begins to Reopen

   by Yehudit Garmaise

   As snow falls in New York City, the rates of COVID patients who are hospitalized with COVID is falling as well.

   Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today that hospitalization continue to decrease, which has been the number that for months, had played a big part in determining what gets reopened in the city and state and when.

   Today, 7,719 patients with COVID were admitted to hospitals in New York state, and 220 patients with COVID were admitted to hospitals in New York City. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic in March, hospitalized COVID patients in New York almost reached 19,000 per day.

    The recent decrease in the rate of patients who were hospitalized with COVID was a determining factor in Gov. Cuomo’s decision to reopen indoor dining in New York City on Fri, Feb. 12, which many hope is the start of the permanent reopening of New York City.

    The key to the “city’s recovery for all of us,” said the mayor, who also announced the re-opening of the city’s middle schools on Feb. 25, “begins with making sure we get the most people vaccinated as quickly as possible.”

   Although Mayor de Blasio was thrilled to announced that the city has “so far provided vaccinations 997,844 vaccinations from Day 1,” he acknowledged that they city could do more if only it had a greater supply of vaccines from the federal government and greater flexibility in the vaccination process from the state.

   “Even with the supply problems, the vaccination effort keeps growing,” the mayor said, “We could be vaccinating half a million people a week.”

   In the meantime, they mayor said that the city is continuing to build mass vaccination sites, such as Citi Field, which will be opening on Wednesday and Yankee Stadium opened as a mass vaccination site last Friday. Eventually, both mass vaccination sites will be open 24/7.

   “We want make sure we can get as many people in to get their shots as possible,” the mayor said. “We know many people want those late night, early morning hours, and we want to make sure there are more and more opportunities.”