NY COVID latest: Nurses dispatched upstate as Omicron cases climb statewide
Gov. Kathy Hochul sent Northwell Health nurses to two western New York hospitals as the state's Omicron count grew and Pfizer weighed in on booster protection.
New York sent reinforcements to hospitals straining under a COVID-19 surge in the western part of the state on Sunday, December 12, 2021, as the Omicron variant continued to establish itself statewide. Nurses employed by Long Island-based Northwell Health were dispatched to help at two western New York hospitals dealing with a surge in infections and hospitalizations, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced, according to PIX11.
The staffing move came as New York's case and hospitalization trends were already climbing heading into what state officials had been calling a winter surge. It followed several days of escalating Omicron detections both in New York City and upstate.
Omicron's spread through the state
New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi reported on Wednesday, December 8, that there were eight confirmed Omicron cases within the five boroughs, with evidence pointing to community spread rather than travel-linked transmission alone. Statewide, four additional Omicron cases were detected on Monday, December 6, bringing New York's total to 12 at that point — including two cases found upstate in Oneida County and two on Long Island in Suffolk County, per PIX11's reporting.
The booster question
Pfizer said on Wednesday, December 8, that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine may protect against the Omicron variant even though the initial two-dose series appeared significantly less effective against it, according to the PIX11 report. The report did not include a numeric effectiveness estimate for the booster against Omicron specifically.
What the western New York deployment signals
Sending nurses from a downstate health system to hospitals nearly 300 miles away indicates the surge's regional unevenness — case growth and hospital strain were not distributed evenly across the state in December 2021, with western New York's hospitals reporting acute enough pressure to require outside staffing help even as the state's confirmed Omicron count remained in the double digits. The available reporting does not name the two receiving hospitals or specify how many nurses were sent.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by PIX11. It restores a story originally published on this site in December 2021; figures are as reported at the time.