All week, Mayor Bill de Blasio has had plenty of reasons to be happy about the state of the pandemic in New York City — the rapid decline of COVID-19 is continuing at an astonishing rate as the weather warms and the vaccine continues getting into arms.
The latest figures from the NYC Department of Health back the mayor up. Not a single New York City ZIP code registered a 7-day positivity average above 9% between April 13-19. Just a week ago, seven neighborhoods in the city exceeded 9% positivity — including two Queens areas that were above 10%. Those Queens areas represent the only two parts of the city with higher than 8% positivity.
One of those 10% areas just a week ago, Ozone Park (ZIP 11416), leads the city with an 8.96% positivity rate, with another 66 new COVID-19 cases reported between April 13-19. That’s still down from the 10.22% positivity rate recorded in the area between April 6-12.
The other high positivity area of Queens in Flushing/Murray Hill/Queensboro Hill (ZIP 11355) saw its 7-day average plunge from 12.15% between March 23-29 to 8.78% between April 13-19. Even so, 202 new COVID-19 cases were detected there over the most recent period.
The decreases continue in eight other ZIP codes in the city where the 7-day positivity rate exceeds 7.5%. One of the biggest drops happened in the Tottenville section of Staten Island — which experienced another COVID-19 surge at the end of March. The positivity rate there fell from 12.5% between March 31-April 6 to 7.5% between April 13-19; 33 new cases were diagnosed there in the latest period.
As for highest raw number of new COVID-19 cases, Cypress Hills/East New York, Brooklyn (11208), which led the city in that category between April 6-12, did so again between April 13-19 — though cases declined there as well.
The section of Cypress Hills/East New York tallied 257 new infections along with a 7-day positivity rate of 7.57%. But that’s down from the 312 cases and 8.75% positivity rate reported the previous week.
Five other Brooklyn neighborhoods are in the top 10 in raw COVID-19 case total including Sunset Park (11220, 210 cases); Gravesend/Homecrest (11223, 183 cases); Brighton Beach/Manhattan Beach/Sheepshead Bay (11235, 169 cases); Cypress Hills/East New York (11207, 168 cases) and Ocean Hill-Brownsville (11212, 164 cases).
Meanwhile, the fewest COVID-19 cases in New York City continue to be found in Lower Manhattan. Two areas of Battery Park City (10280 and 10282) and two adjacent areas of the Financial District (10004 and 10006) have a combined 12 cases.
The Hunters Point section of Long Island City, Queens (11109) and Battery Park City (10282) were tied with the fewest total cases with 2 each. Five Manhattan ZIP codes had five or fewer cases.
The latest statistics confirmed much of the progress de Blasio reported Friday with regard to the city’s fight against COVID-19. The 7-day positivity rate for the city, as of April 21, was 4.45%, with 1,341 new cases reported that same day. Hospitalizations also continue to drop, with 155 admissions related to possible COVID-19 infection recorded on April 21.
De Blasio also touted that more than 6 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered to New Yorkers. That number is only expected to grow as the mayor opened all of the city’s vaccine sites to walk-ins, ages 16 and over, on Friday.
