Political leaders in New York State recently ended a policy requiring masks in healthcare settings. In response to the change, local advocacy organization Mandate Masks NY has compiled a list of hospitals and healthcare centers in New York that are still maintaining mask requirements independently of the state policy.
For several days now, the New York City Department of Education’s COVID-19 case map has had a significant error: on this dashboard, a number of schools are erroneously located in Colombia. Like, the South American country.
My second big story this week is a detailed report about New York City’s wastewater surveillance program, highlighting its lack of transparency. I’m particularly excited to share this one with NYC-based readers, as it uncovers a public program that’s been running under our feet for nearly three years.
Many of the public health failures we saw early in the COVID-19 crisis are now being repeated with monkeypox—which the WHO just declared a global health emergency.
New York City has been closing PCR testing sites, even as the city faced a major Omicron resurgence this spring. The trends I found in a local story—and the pushback that the piece received from city health officials—are pretty indicative of the national state of COVID-19 testing right now.
I’ve recently been getting a lot of questions about test positivity rates, both from COVID-19 Data Dispatch readers and from friends outside this project, which reminded me of just how confusing this pandemic metric can be. So, here’s a brief FAQ post about test positivity.
WWe keep learning about this dangerous variant as it spreads through the U.S. and the world. A few major updates from this week include Omicron’s enormous potential for transmission and the U.S.’s lack of preparedness.
The Omicron surge has arrived in the U.S. While national COVID-19 cases are not significantly up from last week to this week, last week’s bump in the numbers from delayed Thanksgiving reporting has been replaced with a true increase, thanks to the combined pressures of both Delta and Omicron.