After reporting 241 new cases on March 24, cases rose by 66 per cent within a day to 402 cases. Active cases have now risen to 1,529 cases, seven of whom are on ventilators.
yasmin? got it. so let s get some of those questions answered. fill in the gap. alison with that we talk to dr. mark klein what he s seeing. appreciate you joining us on this. as many questions answered as we can. a lot of parents worried when it come to the omicron variant. fill in the gaps. what are you seeing in new orleans when it comes to hospitalizations of children and covid? solely because of covid? this uptick? or other issues as well? thanks for having me on, yasmin. certainly there is a tremendous amount of community transmission of omicron going on. our covid test positivity rate at children s hospital in new orleans has increased from about 5% to almost 16% over the past week. so we know that a tremendous amount of transmission is occurring. we are seeing an increase in hospitalizations, although we haven titude of
quarters of all new yorkers, including the little kids who can t be vaccinated yet. the under 5s. three quarters of all new yorkers have been fully vaccinated. that s fabulous. 95% of people 18 and over. and we re doing better and better with the younger kids. but we need to focus on them. it s wearing masks. it s being careful. you know, taking care about crowded indoor spaces. all the things have been rewarded with a reduction in not just in hospitalizations, but in mortality. we re seeing death goes down as well. also encouraging, new york s covid test positivity rate is under 10%. do you consider that impressive, right? it s been going down for three days now. so three days under 10% and it was going down, you know, we were up at very high. up above 20% at one point. but it s now down below 10% as
celebrating that. people are ready to get back to their normal lives. this was a rule announced in december. under this rule, everyone in public venues had to wear a mask unless the venues or businesses asked for proof of vaccination to enter. of course this rule was put in place during the omicron surge. the numbers are abating. the covid test positivity rate in new york is hovering around 4%, down from double digits a couple of weeks ago. nationwide, numbers are down 40% over last week. way down from the peak last month. and as you mentioned, governor hochul is joining several other governors like delaware, california, oregon, that are also lifting mask mandates. what s unclear at this point is whether she s going to make any changes to the school mask mandate. connecticut, new jersey, delaware and oregon are all going to be lifting school mask mandates. the one here in new york is set to expire february 21st.
reporter: and here in new york city, with rising vaccination rates and the fading delta variant, some encouraging news, the city s covid test positivity rate is now below 1%. kendis and lindsey? gabe, thank you. we have much more on the new york mandate, joining me right now is james mccarthy of the fdnc, also the uniformed fire officer s association president. james, good morning to you and thanks for being with us here. we re hearing concerns that response times could increase as a result of this. how do you see the real impact? for example, halloween weekend, do you expect calls to go up around this time and will people see longer response times this weekend? well, it s the purview of the department to staff the fire companies and the fire houses, and when the weather gets colder we generally have more fires and emergencies. so there is an increase in demand of on the fire department during this time of year but not necessarily for