New York state broke its record for COVID-19 cases recorded four days in a row last week, with more than 23,000 cases reported on Sunday alone, according to the official data.
The vast majority of these cases, about 15,000, came from New York City, which reported almost 10,000 cases per day last week. The state has over 4,000 patients with COVID-19 in the hospital, and 769 of those patients are in intensive care units.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has called on state residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before the winter. About 82% of the state's adult population is fully vaccinated.
''There is no reason, with all the resources available to us ... there is no excuse not to get the adults vaccinated, get the kids vaccinated,'' she said, according to The Hill. ''We can put this pandemic in the rearview mirror. We'll talk about it in the past tense, not the current tense.''
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has begun offering $100 incentives to get residents vaccinated, which begin Tuesday and will last until the end of this year.
''Vaccination is the way to protect against omicron,'' he said in a video, referring to the newly identified COVID-19 variant, adding that ''vaccination equals freedom.''
''It's going to be a challenging few weeks,'' de Blasio said. ''We're seeing a big upsurge in cases. ... It will be a tough few weeks, and we need to do everything possible to address that.''
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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