New York Positive Test Rate Spikes to Winter High

New York Positive Test Rate Spikes to Winter High – Cuomo Talks UK Flights & New Vaccine Shipments: Amid COVID spikes from a new (potentially more contagious) strain of the virus in the United Kingdom, Governor Andrew Cuomo asked UK airlines today for New York State to be added to the list of 120 countries worldwide currently requiring travelers to receive COVID tests before flying out of the kingdom. (British Airways has already agreed.) “I know and I believe my intuition is correct that it is another disaster waiting to happen,” Cuomo said. This against the backdrop of good vaccine news starting with 120,000 additional doses of the Pfizer and 346,000 doses and the Moderna vaccine will arrive in New York this week. Cuomo also announced more than 38,000 vaccine doses have been administered in New York State as of Monday morning – the highest reported total in the nation.

Positive Test Rates Spike to New Winter Highs

New York’s Daily Positive Test rate hit a Winter high yesterday at 5.8% up from 5.07% last week and 3.52% three weeks ago. The statewide 7-day rolling average followed suit, rising to 5.4%. Westchester’s Mid-Hudson Region also rose last week with a 7-day rolling average positivity rate of 6.3% compared to 6% a week ago. New York’s Mohawk Valley (between the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains) remains the hardest hit region with a positivity rate of 8.4%. New York’s Southern Tier (2.4%) and New York City (4.3%) continue to anchor the low end of the scale. Westchester’s positive test rate remained unchanged at 5.9% from last week and the county continues to have six Micro-Cluster Focus Zones including an Orange Zone in Port Chester and Yellow Zones in New Rochelle, Ossining, Tarrytown, Peekskill and Yonkers.

Nationally, the 7-day rolling average positive test rate dropped from 11.4% to 11.2%. It has remained in that range for the past three weeks, according to the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The US positive test rate peaked at 21.9% in the spring and bottomed at 4.1% in June and 4% in October.