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RELEASE: Hochul update on covid19 on December 16, 2021. Situation is 'bad' and 'a public health crisis.'
NYSNYS News
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For Immediate Release: 12/16/2021
GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL


GOVERNOR HOCHUL UPDATES NEW YORKERS ON STATE'S PROGRESS COMBATING COVID-19

237,596 Vaccine Doses Administered Over Last 24 Hours

53 COVID-19 Deaths Statewide Yesterday

Governor Kathy Hochul today updated New Yorkers on the state's progress combating COVID-19.

"This is a public health crisis. We must not make light of the winter surge that we are facing, and we should continue to encourage everyone we know to get vaccinated, get the booster and wear a mask," Governor Hochul said. "Let's all get through this holiday season safely. There are testing sites and boosters widely available across the state in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones from getting seriously ill due to COVID- 19."

Today's data is summarized briefly below:
Test Results Reported - 277,956
Total Positive - 18,276
Percent Positive - 6.58%
7-Day Average Percent Positive - 5.11%
Patient Hospitalization - 3,765 (-19)
Patients Newly Admitted - 526
Patients in ICU - 762 (+35)
Patients in ICU with Intubation - 433 (+10)
Total Discharges - 221,831 (+532)
New deaths reported by healthcare facilities through HERDS - 53
Total deaths reported by healthcare facilities through HERDS - 47,370
The Health Electronic Response Data System is a NYS DOH data source that collects confirmed daily death data as reported by hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities only.
Total deaths reported to and compiled by the CDC - 60,152

This daily COVID-19 provisional death certificate data reported by NYS DOH and NYC to the CDC includes those who died in any location, including hospitals, nursing homes, adult care facilities, at home, in hospice and other settings.
Total vaccine doses administered - 31,971,609
Total vaccine doses administered over past 24 hours - 237,596
Total vaccine doses administered over past 7 days - 1,067,323
Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with at least one vaccine dose - 87.7%
Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with completed vaccine series - 79.8%
Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with at least one vaccine dose (CDC) - 93.8%
Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with completed vaccine series (CDC) - 82.1%
Percent of all New Yorkers with at least one vaccine dose - 76.3%
Percent of all New Yorkers with completed vaccine series - 68.7%
Percent of all New Yorkers with at least one vaccine dose (CDC) - 81.4%
Percent of all New Yorkers with completed vaccine series (CDC) - 70.7%

Each region's 7-day average of cases per 100K population is as follows:

REGION
Monday, December 13, 2021
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Wednesday, December 14, 2021
Capital Region
58.65
59.16
58.08
Central New York
64.92
65.10
65.10
Finger Lakes
61.42
60.26
56.25
Long Island
67.74
70.79
77.86
Mid-Hudson
47.72
49.28
52.92
Mohawk Valley
74.80
73.15
74.21
New York City
42.59
46.84
53.75
North Country
66.63
64.00
61.51
Southern Tier
85.21
89.64
96.54
Western New York
66.17
63.52
62.21
Statewide
54.15
56.43
60.66

Each region's 7-day average percentage of positive test results reported over the last three days is as follows:

REGION
Monday, December 13, 2021
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Wednesday, December 14, 2021
Capital Region
6.43%
6.65%
6.34%
Central New York
7.65%
7.94%
7.58%
Finger Lakes
8.39%
8.52%
8.18%
Long Island
6.77%
7.12%
7.53%
Mid-Hudson
4.59%
4.65%
5.02%
Mohawk Valley
7.77%
7.85%
7.85%
New York City
2.90%
3.16%
3.56%
North Country
7.72%
7.67%
7.23%
Southern Tier
6.24%
6.56%
6.70%
Western New York
9.27%
9.23%
9.29%
Statewide
4.65%
4.83%
5.11%

Each New York City borough's 7-day average percentage of positive test results reported over the last three days is as follows:

BOROUGH
Monday, December 13, 2021
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Wednesday, December 14, 2021
Bronx
2.70%
2.91%
3.15%
Kings
2.76%
2.99%
3.41%
New York
2.42%
2.80%
3.45%
Queens
3.32%
3.54%
3.81%
Richmond
4.55%
4.62%
4.70%


Yesterday, 18,276 New Yorkers tested positive for COVID-19 in New York State, bringing the total compiled by HERDS to 2,874,781. A geographic breakdown is as follows:

County
Total Positive
New Positive
Total Omicron Cases Confirmed Statewide: 59*
Albany
36,959
186
-
Allegany
6,618
49
-
Broome
30,617
214
1
Cattaraugus
10,925
59
-
Cayuga
10,579
68
-
Chautauqua
16,577
111
-
Chemung
14,010
80
-
Chenango
6,190
53
-
Clinton
8,917
70
-
Columbia
6,301
25
-
Cortland
6,604
45
-
Delaware
5,029
36
-
Dutchess
40,340
231
-
Erie
135,342
654
-
Essex
3,309
18
-
Franklin
6,033
33
-
Fulton
8,547
38
-
Genesee
9,534
59
-
Greene
5,384
28
-
Hamilton
565
2
-
Herkimer
9,254
66
-
Jefferson
12,501
53
-
Lewis
4,565
17
-
Livingston
7,940
41
-
Madison
8,229
64
-
Monroe
105,131
421
-
Montgomery
7,834
35
-
Nassau
240,073
1,648
6
Niagara
31,529
144
-
NYC
1,186,911
8,318
30
Oneida
36,003
217
4
Onondaga
64,227
320
1
Ontario
12,959
81
-
Orange
66,065
336
-
Orleans
6,115
27
-
Oswego
15,742
143
-
Otsego
6,113
49
-
Putnam
14,000
68
-
Rensselaer
19,102
87
-
Rockland
57,487
198
-
Saratoga
27,399
185
-
Schenectady
20,814
89
-
Schoharie
3,112
23
-
Schuyler
2,192
26
-
Seneca
3,640
25
-
St. Lawrence
14,247
70
-
Steuben
13,838
72
-
Suffolk
272,396
1,800
14
Sullivan
10,550
86
-
Tioga
7,048
61
-
Tompkins
9,234
391
2
Ulster
20,435
104
-
Warren
8,169
56
-
Washington
7,584
51
-
Wayne
11,471
78
-
Westchester
154,426
730
1
Wyoming
5,844
19
-
Yates
2,222
18
-
Unknown
-
-
-

* These case counts represent those known cases that have been confirmed by a state approved laboratory, and do not fully represent the total cases likely in the population.

Yesterday, 53 New Yorkers died due to COVID-19, bringing the total to 47,370. A geographic breakdown is as follows, by county of residence:

Deaths by County of Residence
County
New Deaths
Bronx
1
Broome
1
Cattaraugus
1
Cayuga
1
Chautauqua
2
Erie
6
Essex
1
Greene
1
Kings
2
Manhattan
3
Monroe
2
Nassau
1
Niagara
3
Onondaga
5
Ontario
1
Queens
6
Richmond
2
Saratoga
2
Schenectady
2
St. Lawrence
1
Suffolk
5
Sullivan
1
Ulster
1
Wayne
1
Westchester
1

All New York State mass vaccination sites are open to eligible New Yorkers aged 5 and older, with walk-in vaccination available at all sites on a first-come, first-serve basis for people aged 12 and older. Information on which sites require appointments for children in the 5-11 age group is available on our website. People who prefer to make an appointment at a state-run mass vaccination site can do so on the Am I Eligible App or by calling 1-833-NYS-4-VAX. People may also contact their local health department, pharmacy, doctor or hospital to schedule appointments where vaccines are available, or visit vaccines.gov to find information on vaccine appointments near them.

New Yorkers looking to schedule vaccine appointments for 5-11-year-old children are encouraged to contact their child's pediatrician, family physician, county health departments, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), rural health centers, or pharmacies that may be administering the vaccine for this age group. Parents and guardians can visit vaccines.gov, text their ZIP code to 438829, or call 1-800-232-0233 to find nearby locations. Make sure that the provider offers the Pfizer-BioNTechCOVID-19 vaccine, as the other COVID-19 vaccines are not yet authorized for this age group.

Visit our website for parents and guardians for new information, frequently asked questions and answers, and resources specifically designed for parents and guardians of this age group.

Yesterday, 71,107 New Yorkers received their first vaccine dose, and 64,396 completed their vaccine series. A geographic breakdown of New Yorkers who have been vaccinated by region is as follows:


People with at least one vaccine dose
People with complete vaccine series

Region
Cumulative
Total
Increase over past 24 hours
Cumulative
Total
Increase over past 24 hours

Capital Region
924,575
49,317
848,479
48,398

Central New York
622,668
273
575,220
671

Finger Lakes
827,382
544
763,428
864

Long Island
2,048,829
3,684
1,821,210
2,340

Mid-Hudson
1,600,514
2,467
1,403,771
2,227

Mohawk Valley
313,392
156
289,654
391

New York City
7,403,397
13,545
6,560,084
7,351

North Country
291,165
239
262,096
213

Southern Tier
421,314
347
385,868
371

Western New York
910,872
535
831,648
1,570

Statewide
15,364,108
71,107
13,741,458
64,396








The COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker Dashboard is available to update New Yorkers on the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. The New York State Department of Health requires vaccinating facilities to report all COVID-19 vaccine administration data within 24 hours; the vaccine administration data on the dashboard is updated daily to reflect the most up-to-date metrics in the state's vaccination effort. New York State Department of Health-reported data from NYSIIS and CIR differs slightly from federally-reported data, which is inclusive of federally-administered doses and other minor differences. Both numbers are included in the release above.

** Increase in the Capital Region is due to large data submission from a single organization based in Albany.

****

For Immediate Release: 12/16/2021
GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL


VIDEO, AUDIO, PHOTOS & RUSH TRANSCRIPT: GOVERNOR HOCHUL HOLDS MEDIA AVAILABILITY FOLLOWING A VIRTUAL CABINET MEETING

Governor Hochul: "We're asking people to follow common sense. Get vaccinated, get boosted. Please don't take a chance."

Earlier today, Governor Hochul held a media availability following the first cabinet meeting of her Administration.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page here.

SLIDESHOW of Dr. Bassett's Presentation is available here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Hello, everyone. It's great to see you again. And I thank you for coming in person. Just for the record, everyone here is vaxxed, everyone here is boosted, we're six feet apart. We'll keep our masks on when we're not speaking. In the interest of making sure that you can hear me, I'm going to invoke the rule we have in place for people who are using microphones. So just so you know, all the rules have been followed here.

We just wrapped up my very first cabinet meeting and it was such a privilege for me to see the individuals, the very diverse individuals from all walks of life and gender diversity, racial diversity, cultural diversity, who have become part of our team. And I'm really energized by what they bring to the experience of reshaping state government. And as I said on the first day in this very room, it is my highest priority to restore people's faith in state government. And they are the dream team that are helping me execute that every single day.

We had a chance to hear from Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin on all the initiatives he's working on, whether it's a public safety, eradicating gun violence, dealing with the housing insecurity crisis we have. And I want to thank him and also economic development initiatives. He has a lot on his plate. I've challenged him to beat my record in miles around the states. So he's on track to do that, he's been everywhere. And I thank him for his, his friendship and his partnership, our Lieutenant Governor, Brian Benjamin.

Also, we heard from Robert Mujica on our budget priorities as everyone knows our budget is due in a matter of weeks, we will keep to that proper schedule as well as giving an analysis of our fiscal condition right now and how we're heading into an uncertain time, particularly with the variant spiking again, and creating more havoc than we'd anticipated, but we now will have the reserves in place to be able to deal with whatever comes our way. And that was an important priority of mine to make sure we have the resources to deal with the future challenges.

I also had a chance for my administration to hear directly from Dr. Mary Bassett, who is an extraordinary individual leader who has tremendous service in the city of New York. And we were able to pull her out of a very nice position at Harvard to join our team. And when she said, yes, I knew that we would have someone who was a very confident leader, but also an inspiring leader. And I want to thank her for her work. And I asked her to give an update then, and because it's so important in light of the Omicron variant and what is happening all across our state. No state is untouched by what we anticipate will be a very serious situation.

It's not something we haven't spoken about. It's not something we haven't warned about. It's not something we haven't prepared for. However, it is upon us. That winter surge is in full force, and I believe it's going to get even stronger and more virulent. And we are in for a rough ride this winter season.

So I asked Dr. Bassett to speak then, but I wanted to have her present to you a synopsis of what she shared with us. Just so you have the data in real time with when I was briefed and Dr. Bassett, if you could share some of the highlights of your presentation, I'd appreciate it.

Dr. Bassett: Thank you very much governor. So I'm going to start out with this graph, which really shows where we've been in the last couple of months.
I hope that you can read it, some of the print is a little bit small.

But in the summer, after having sort of had a lull in transmission and beginning to open up, which we've continued, we began to see what we now call the Delta surge, a new variant that was first described in India. It was the fourth variant of concern, according to the World Health Organization. And now we're at the winter surge, something that was anticipated because as the weather gets colder, more people go inside and also more people were mixing in ways that they didn't do a year ago. So the winter surge has been substantial.

We have seen levels, if you compare the level of hospitalizations, that's what the red line is, on December 14th, compared to where it was back in July, or even at the peak of the Delta surge, you can see that hospitalizations are the highest that we've seen in months and are still going up.

At the same time, that line at the bottom shows the rate of increase of vaccination. Just to give you an idea of the numbers. As this winter surge began, we went from 65 to 68% of the population fully vaccinated. And that line just shows that we've had a flattening out of the rate of uptake of the vaccinations and I hope that all of you are vaccinated. I recommend that everyone be vaccinated and boosted.

And we've seen a little uptick recently that I think reflects the efforts of the governor, my department and the occurrence of the concern about new variants. Let me show you this, at the risk of acting like a math teacher, for the press, this shows you what happens with exponential spread, in the green or something equivalent to the Delta variant, that we think each person can infect a one and a half to two people. If you look at the bottom there in 10 cycles, that means 10 cycles of transmission. You get up to 2000 cases. With a more contagious variant, the difference in the total number of people infected becomes really huge. Say each case, infects four people at the end of 10 cycles, you have nearly 1.4 million infections.

Now think about how serious this virus is: say that 10% of people infected end up hospitalized, that's at the bottom of the new admissions line there, you get about 200 cases. But in contrast, if you have so many more people infected, this goes up to about 14,000. I was inspired to show you these data because these type of data, and to show the cabinet these data, because these types of data were shared by the president of Cornell University.

So this sets me up to talk about Omicron and we are keeping an eye on what's going on of the world. Here we have data from Norway and Denmark, highly vaccinated populations with an age distribution more like the United States than South Africa. Look at the peak there. These are new cases. So this is infections, not hospitalizations. But we know that even if it's much less likely to cause severe disease, which seems to be the case, if you have a lot of people infected, even a small proportion will lead to big numbers.

And of course we're also in flu season and I have to always use the chance to remind people that they need to get both vaccinated for COVID and for flu when everybody was sort of living very constrained lives. We hardly saw any flu last season. But this year we're already ahead of where we were in the last big flu season two years ago. So we're concerned also about flu and the fact that we have both of these in our midst. So that's where we are.

We are in the midst of a Delta surge. We have Omicron in the wings. It's been identified here in New York State. And we also can't forget that with winter comes seasonal influenza. Thank you, Governor.

Governor Hochul: Thank you, Dr. Bassett for sharing that. And just as far as our regular update goes, we lost 71 New Yorkers yesterday, heartbreaking experience for families, particularly heading into this holiday season and our hearts go out to them and the numbers statewide continue to rise. The hospitalizations continue to escalate.

And our vaccinations not quite plateaued, but I want to make sure everyone knows that particularly individuals who received their first vaccination early on, and these are the people who lived in assisted living and nursing homes and who were immunocompromised, they may have been vaccinated back in December, January, February. You need to get that booster shot because otherwise you are not nearly as protected as you need to be against this new variant.

And why I thought the point that Dr. Bassett made was really important, people are underestimating the power of Omicron because they're saying, well, people aren't getting really sick, they're not in hospitals. Look at the percentages she just showed us based on that graph. You may only have 1% of people infected hospitalized versus 10% from Delta, but if you have a million more people infected because it's spread so much more quickly, that means you'll have overflowing hospitals at this rate.

That was not the reality, she showed you what could happen, but she wanted you to see clearly what an exponential transmission looks like. So that is why, people are saying it's not that big a deal. It's going to spread to some people who have not been fully vaccinated or they didn't get the booster, or they may have just received their vaccine this fall, which is still effective, but at some point it'll wane. And that is why we are taking very common sense, simple measures, like wearing a mask, which I know I'm going to get questions about. And go ahead because I know it's coming, but this has to be the least intrusive thing that we can do.

We're asking people to follow common sense. Get vaccinated, get boosted. Please don't take a chance. Please don't take a chance. You know, we've lost members of our extended family for people who just refuse to get vaccinated on principle because they thought there was some sort of affecting their personal liberties and freedoms. People have a right to stay alive and people that you affect have a right to live as well. And that's something we all should remember.

So I want to thank the press for reminding everyone how important this is. Your intense coverage of this is critically important. So people know what we're heading into. And I thank you for that again.

Lastly, yes, it's 20 days from now, I'll be delivering the State of the State address. It will be my first. I'm very excited to do it in the legislature. I've heard from countless members of the legislature who remind me that it's technically not a State of the State, it's called a Message to the Legislature. So returning it to the home of the legislature is the right thing to do. And also, it will be much more scaled back because of this pandemic. We hope it'll be a different dynamic, but just as I was disappointed not to be able to have my cabinet meeting in person, to have everybody get to know each other better, we'll also have to suspend the normal activities around the State of the State, the Message to the Legislature. We'll announce what that's going to look like as well as making sure we have policies in place for people coming into this building.

I had a meeting with the leaders of the Assembly and the Senate just recently to talk about making sure we have a policy in place, certainly before we invite people back at the beginning of next year. So stay tuned for the details on what that will look like. Again, we have a very evolving situation here. Not that we're surprised. Not that it was unexpected. But it continues to be as bad as we had expected. And that's what we're dealing with right now.

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