Since the peak of the holiday surge in early January, New York City has seen a steep decline in the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus each day, as have the state and the nation.
But the drop has not been as dramatic as it has been nationally, and community transmission in the city remains high, with about 3,200 probable and confirmed new cases reported daily. As more contagious variants spread, the city’s positive test rate has only dropped slowly, to over 7.1 percent this week from 8 percent two weeks ago, according to city data.
“Everything seems so tenuous and fragile in many ways,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “While overall there is a decrease, it is moving incredibly slow, in some ways slower than the decrease that has been noted in the rest of the country.”
Two studies that were published online this week — but have yet to be peer reviewed — said that a new variant in New York City, first detected in samples collected in November, was beginning to spread. This variant, called B.1.526, shared similar characteristics to variants found in South Africa and Brazil that have been shown to weaken the effectiveness of vaccines.
At this point it’s unclear what the new variant means in the long-term, since officials don’t know yet the real-world impact it will have.
“Right now, we need to just consider this a variant of interest — something that’s interesting, that we need to follow and track,” Dr. Jay Varma, a senior adviser to the mayor’s office, said at a Thursday news conference. “But it doesn’t change anything about our public health concern.”
The existence of variants may require people who have been fully vaccinated to receive a third booster shot by the end of the year. But most importantly, it underscores the need to get more people vaccinated as soon as possible.
How many variants are spreading in the city?
As of Wednesday, officials were publicly tracking only the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant — first discovered in Britain — which they said made up about 6.2 percent of cases in the second week of February.
That variant was first detected in New York in early January, and has been spreading. Between Jan. 11 and Jan. 31, it was detected in 2.7 percent of the cases sequenced in New York City, according to data released weekly by the city. In the first week of February, that number shot up to 7 percent.
But the two studies published online this week, by researchers at Caltech and Columbia University, suggest more variants have been spreading in the city. Aside from the discovery of the new variant, these researchers found a case of the variant that first emerged in South Africa and two cases of the variant originating in Brazil that had not yet been publicly reported by the city or state.
City officials said that they were not consulted about the new research and only told about it the day of its release.
Nationwide, researchers have mostly focused on the variant first discovered in Britain, because it is spreading widely. One study found that B.1.1.7 cases are doubling about every 10 days. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has predicted that the B.1.1.7 variant, which is estimated to be 35 to 45 percent more transmissible, could become the dominant source of infection across the country in March.
How is the city doing with vaccinations?
One encouraging sign about the rollout is that there has been a steeper drop in the positive test rate among New Yorkers over 75 than in New Yorkers as a whole, likely because of vaccinations. Also, emergency room admissions for people over 65 have stabilized and are falling gradually.
Epidemiologists say that these numbers underscore the importance of targeting vaccinations to those most likely to be hospitalized and die from the virus, particularly as the variant first detected in Britain becomes more common…
Read More: ‘Everything Seems So Tenuous’: Variants Threaten N.Y.C.’s Progress on Virus