The Big Apple must immediately brace for more hospitalizations during the NYC Omicron crisis before frontline nurses and doctors become overwhelmed again, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and incoming Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said Tuesday.
The politicos joined alongside New York State Nurses Association at a virtual rally Tuesday calling for a safety overhaul amidst the Omicron surge.
Both Williams and Levine — who themselves are recovering after they tested positive for the virus — expressed concern over the rising tide of COVID-19 cases citywide, resulting in increased hospitalization.
“We have seen a four- or five-fold increase in the number of patients hospitalized with COVID in the past month. We were at under 500 a month ago in New York City, we are at almost 2,500 now. That is below previous peaks, but it’s rising fast,” Levine said, adding, “We really want to sound the alarm on this, and we want action.”
Williams and Levine pressed for nurses to receive higher pay, including hazard pay, in hopes of keeping and garnering additional staff in hospitals while also touting the need for further testing sites even as Governor Kathy Hochul pledges additional test resources for NYC. This message comes during a time when the politicians clearly feel that the city’s healthcare system and workers are left depleted and exhausted following two years of harsh combat with the invisible enemy.
“New York City has led the national Omicron waves that we’re something of a canary in the coal mine for the country, and the federal government should be investing here,” Levine said.
The pair didn’t just urge for the mindsets within medical facilities to change, they also shamed the lack of protocols on both a governmental and street levelWilliams feels a surge plan needs to be implemented in order to better combat hospitalizations and the lengthy wait times for testing New Yorkers are seeing all over the city.
“We just have to have a surge plan. That’s an easy message to the public. That tells the public where we are on threat levels and encourages changes in behavior,” Williams said.
Williams declared that he does not believe the city should shut down at every surge, but he called for businesses to allow those who can work from home to do so and refrain from congregating, indicating that using an exhausted medical workforce as a crutch in preventable cases is dangerous and selfish.
“The one thing we all can do is change our behaviors as well so we don’t have to go into the hospitals in the first place,” Williams said, adding, “It’s unfair to the health care workers that they have to go to work to make sure they take care of us, but we are not doing some of the things that we should be doing to change behavior.”
Although hospitalization numbers are not reaching the height of previous surges thanks to the implementation of vaccines and boosters, the renewed call for social distancing and the zigzagging lines of humanity that can seemingly be found on every other street corner as concerned residents wait for COVID testing, the state of the city appears eerily similar to the initial outbreak two years prior. Both politicians hope that their call for staffing reinforcements and a public surge guideline will be headed before another variant emerges.
“You don’t know what the next variant is going to be. So, we have to be prepared,” Williams said.
