NEW YORK — One New York City subway line was suspended Wednesday, and five others were running with delays because so many workers were out sick.
Twenty CityMD locations, where thousands of New Yorkers go to get tested for the coronavirus, were closed because of staffing shortages caused by the virus.
The Police Department has canceled days off for any officer healthy enough to work. Nearly 1 in 3 paramedics are out sick, and the Fire Department begged New Yorkers not to call 911 unless they were truly experiencing an emergency, after a spate of calls from people who were just looking for an ambulance ride to a hospital to get a coronavirus test.
Broadway shows are closing even as others reopen. Libraries are shuttering left and right.
New York City is exhausted, beleaguered and riddled with coronavirus thanks to the omicron variant. More than 110,000 people have tested positive just since Christmas Day, and the positivity rate in some neighborhoods is approaching 30%.
Some hospitals in the city are under stress: Mount Sinai Health System said Wednesday it was deferring elective surgeries when possible.
Omicron, Mayor Bill de Blasio told New Yorkers shortly before Christmas, would provide the city with a “challenging few weeks.” But because omicron appears to cause milder disease than earlier iterations of the virus, because more than 80% of New Yorkers are fully vaccinated, and because he has ordered a vaccine mandate for all private-sector employers, he said he did not see a need for a 2020-style lockdown.
And so the city is carrying on with plans for a limited Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drop.
Gov. Kathy C. Hochul announced a new statewide record of 67,000 daily cases Wednesday — nearly 20,000 more than the previous record set Dec. 24 — and said that COVID-related hospital admissions jumped 10% in a single day and that deaths neared 100 for the first time in months.
New York City also set a record, with 39,591 new cases announced Wednesday by the governor’s office, nearly 30% more than the old record of 31,024, also set Dec. 24. And the city’s COVID hospitalizations are up to more than 2,700 — but the number of COVID patients in intensive care was 350 earlier this week, less than half the number during last winter’s surge.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .