What's New

  • Welcome to our new and improved COVID stats page! Based on expert advice, we’ve retooled it to focus on the stats that matter most in 2023: hospitalizations, variants and booster rates. We’ll also be adding wastewater data in the coming weeks.
  • COVID hospitalizations are still high in New York City, though still far short of last winter’s peak. Close to 630 New Yorkers are currently hospitalized with COVID, up from 150 at the start of the summer.
  • Wastewater data shows that the concentration of the virus in sewage is also elevated compared to this summer.
  • The alphabet soup of variants is still simmering. The omicron descendant EG.5 (Eris) is leading the pack, with about 28% of recent cases attributed to it in New York City.
  • The new COVID vaccine is available, but we have no idea how popular it is in New York City. The NYC health department has stopped sharing vaccine data, citing the end of the official public health emergency (and the end of vaccine reports to the citywide immunization registry). We’ll keep our vaccine charts up for a few weeks for posterity, but there won’t be any more data updates for them.

The charts, tables and maps on this page refresh with the latest data daily or weekly, but we only update the article’s text occasionally. The last text update happened on Oct. 6.

Want different metrics on this page? Please send any questions or comments to SciHealthData@wnyc.org.

Recent Trends

These charts portray New York City’s primary COVID statistics over the last 90 days. After months of rock-bottom transmission, hospitalizations and cases began ticking up again in July. Case rates have started declining in the last two weeks, but a falloff in COVID testing and tracking has made this data less reliable over time.

New York City’s hospitalization rate is still elevated compared to summertime figures, but it remains well below last winter’s peak. As of Oct. 4, 1,700 people were currently hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state, and around 640 of those cases were in the city.

Vaccinations

New York City’s vaccine campaign started in December 2021 with early hiccups, caused mostly by inclement weather and limited federal supplies of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Since then, though, most New Yorkers have opted for at least the initial course of vaccines. The boosters have been less popular, however, especially 2022’s batch of bivalent shots that were designed to fight omicron.

In late September, the NYC health department announced it would no longer share up-to-date vaccine totals on its website. That means there’s no data available from the city on the uptake of the new monovalent boosters, which became available earlier this fall.

Original vaccination rates still vary widely among neighborhoods—from 55% in Borough Park to 100% in Midtown Manhattan. Uptake of the bivalent boosters, meanwhile, reached 50% in only one neighborhood: the financial district in Lower Manhattan. Citywide, Black and white New Yorkers’ vaccination rates lag behind other groups, and young children are also undervaccinated.

Vaccinated and boosted New Yorkers have drastically lower case and hospitalization rates than unvaccinated people.

Variants

Viruses mutate, much like any microorganism or creature with a genome. Coronavirus variants will pose a perpetual threat to unvaccinated people until infection rates are driven to zero.

The omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 dominated local case counts for the first half of 2023, according to CDC data. In recent months, it’s lost ground to an alphabet soup of competing strains, including EG.5 (Eris), which accounts for more than a quarter of the latest cases. The World Health Organization is tracking the new strain but stated that it hasn’t been linked to increased deaths or severe infections.

Research suggests that the COVID-19 vaccines may not be as effective against infections caused by the delta and omicron variants, but the drugs can still protect against severe disease, especially after boosters. Hospitalizations and deaths are lower for people, including children, who take updated vaccines.

NYC Pandemic Over Time

These charts show how cases and hospitalizations evolved throughout every borough and citywide.

COVID-19 Pandemic In New York, New Jersey And Connecticut


In May, the CDC updated its COVID-19 guidance to recommend universal masking only when hospital admissions are very high and hospital capacity is limited. As of Sept. 30, that designation doesn’t apply anywhere in the tri-state area.