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The Largest U.S. Coronavirus Hot Spot Swells Beyond Central New York


The orange stain first appeared on the national risk map in early April, marking three counties in central New York with “high” community levels of coronavirus, the only such cluster in the country. .

By mid-April, the orange color had spread to 10 suburban counties, with a pale yellow surrounding. Now, it has as many as two dozen orange seeds, stretching across upstate New York and spilling over into Pennsylvania and Vermont.

There are also many orange and yellow seeds in other parts of the country now, but the hot spot that started in central New York is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s largest, largely pristine black spot. country mapand it may still get bigger when the map is updated on Thursday night.

Health experts say that people in hotspots, which include cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Binghamton, should step up their precautions. Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the CDC, told reporters on Tuesday: “These are the areas where the CDC recommends that people wear masks in public places indoors due to the increasing severity of the illness. increased likelihood of significant healthcare stress”.

But local officials have been reluctant to issue any orders along those lines. “The missions don’t work well, create anxiety in the community, and are unenforceable,” Ryan McMahon, executive director of Onondaga County, which includes Syracuse, said in an interview. “What we did was distribute tens of thousands of KN95 masks and Covid tests, and send them to people’s homes.”

No one is sure why there is a new wave of coronavirus cases, caused by The highly contagious Omicron subvariables BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1 hold first place in central New York.

“It’s really hard to pinpoint where this is coming from,” said Mary McFadden, director of public health in Broome County, which includes Binghamton. “It was literally from everywhere. It is difficult to determine exactly with home tests. ”

Mr McMahon said it broke the pattern of past bull runs. “It doesn’t make much sense,” he said. “In the middle of the state, we see peaks at the halfway point or at the end.”

He said the increase was first detected after a school week in February in some of his county’s wealthier towns, suggesting that tourism may have played some role. The area is also home to many colleges and universities, including Syracuse University in Onondaga County and one of the State University of New York’s largest campuses, Binghamton University, in Broome County.

Mr. McMahon said Onondaga, with 473,000 residents, uses wastewater testing and surveillance testing extensively in its schools to track the virus and has begun to see an improvement in data from both within the last few days. But overall testing positivity in the county remains high, and there are 112 people with Covid-19 in hospitals on Monday, up from 51 four weeks ago.

One of the factors the CDC evaluates to assess risk is the strain on hospitals. Many hospitals in the hotspot area have struggled to cope with the coronavirus throughout the pandemic.

Dr. Isaac B. Weisfuse, a medical epidemiologist at Cornell University, said some of the orange counties are sparsely populated and a small number of cases could cause per capita rates there to soar. . the increase of new cases March. Cornell’s nut, Tompkins, is yellow but the middle is orange.

“Youth people seem to have higher rates than the elderly or very young,” he said. “A bar packed with an infected person, you get a lot of infections from there, if people don’t wear masks.”

Many universities in the area have higher immunization rates than surrounding communities. For example, Wells University has a vaccination rate above 90%, according to Chris Pollock, a spokesman, while around Cayuga County it is 59%.

Broome County, like many other suburban counties, is emphasizing mask-wearing, physical distancing, vaccinations and booster shots as preventative measures, but all on a voluntary basis. “We still need to be diligent and vigilant in how we protect ourselves and those more vulnerable,” Ms. McFadden said.

Some colleges in the area have taken more stringent steps, with mandates to vaccinate students and staff and new regulations on face masks on campus.

Mr. McMahon said he doesn’t know what could have made his county one of the first to be affected.

“If you look at the masked missions, they show up at the same time” all over the region, he said. “Somehow, the contagious differential got here first.”





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