New Jersey on Thursday continued on its record-setting streak, reporting another 27,975 confirmed cases of COVID-19, shattering once more the daily record for the most positive tests since the beginning of the 22-month-old pandemic.
The state also reported another 34 confirmed COVID-19 deaths.
The new mark is the latest in a series of record-setting days for the Garden State. On Wednesday, New Jersey recorded 20,483 cases. Until last week, the state’s single-day record was 6,922, set Jan. 13. The state has exceeded a previous record six times since Dec. 22.
The dramatic spike in cases comes as the state, region and country face a new winter surge, the rise of the omicron variant and a massive increase in the demand for testing before and after holiday gatherings.
On Tuesday, the U.S. reported its highest daily case count since the pandemic began, topping 446,000 positive cases nationwide.
Statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to increase as well, reaching an 11-month high. They have not grown at the level they did last winter, when figures exceeded 3,800, or at the beginning of the pandemic, when hospitalizations exceeded 8,000. But increases in patients typically follow a week to 10 days after surges in case numbers.
There are caveats to the case records. The spike comes as significantly more people are being tested, safeguarding planned holiday gatherings amid fears over omicron.
It’s also not known if all the cases announced Wednesday were over a 24-hour period. Some may have been from prior tests just now reported by the state.
And officials note that testing was less widely available in the first months of the pandemic, making it difficult to compare periods. The highest day in that span for confirmed positive tests was 4,427 on April 23, 2020.
Testing is now far more available. The state reported 104,655 PCR tests conducted on Dec. 22, a few days before families gathered for the Christmas holiday and the most tests recorded in a single day during the pandemic for New Jersey. One in five of those test came back positive. That followed two days of nearly 100,000 tests — 97,497 tests conducted on Dec. 20, and 98,978 on Dec. 21.
During the surge in cases last winter, there were just two days — Dec. 20, 2020 and Jan. 11 — with more than 90,000 tests administered.
That said, it’s possible there are more cases in the state than are being caught because high demand has made it difficult to get a test.
Big spike in infections
Despite the caveats, there’s no doubt numbers are trending in the wrong direction. The 48,458 confirmed positive tests reported the last two days is higher than the total monthly cases reported in both October (40,050) and November (42,971).
With Thursday’s numbers factored in, the state’s seven-day average for new confirmed positive tests rose to 16,282, nearly double the average a week ago and more than 739% percent higher than this time last month.
Thursday also marked the fifteenth consecutive day in which the state has reported more than 6,000 new positive tests a day. By comparison, New Jersey had only six days total of more than 6,000 cases last winter.
The statewide positivity rate for tests administered Saturday, the most recent day available, was 37.73%.
That number remains below the positivity rates between 50 and 60% the state saw at the beginning of the pandemic. But the rate has been trending upward since the first week in November when positivity was between 2.93% and 5.84%.
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The state did not break down how many of the new cases are from the delta or omicron variants. New Jersey has reported only a handful of omicron cases so far, though state officials said there are likely much more in the state because data is lagging.
For a seven-day period ending Dec. 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated about 58.6% of all new coronavirus cases nationwide were from the omicron variant. In New Jersey, omicron accounted for 8% of cases sampled Dec. 5 to Dec. 11, according to state data.
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There are early signs that while the omicron variant is more transmissible, it may cause less severe symptoms and require fewer hospitalizations than previous strains. Officials and experts also say South Africa, once the center of the omicron surge, is now seeing its cases of the variant plunging.
Officials are calling for New Jerseyans to be careful as they celebrate the holidays this season. They are especially asking people to get tested before gatherings and to get booster shots.
Gov. Phil Murphy — who is scheduled to return Thursday from an eight-day family vacation to Costa Rica — has suggested in recent weeks that all options are “on the table” when it comes to reimposing restrictions to combat the new surge.
But he has said a statewide lockdown is unlikely. The governor has said the biggest focus is on preventing hospital capacity from being overwhelmed.
Latest hospital data
New Jersey’s hospital COVID-19 count has been on the rise since early to mid-November, when the total number of virus patients statewide was between 600 and 700. Hospitalizations and severe illness are critical metrics to watch, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a meeting Monday with the nation’s governors.
There were 3,604 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across New Jersey’s 71 hospitals as of Wednesday night. That was 331 more the night before, when two hospitals didn’t report data, despite at least 458 discharges during the 24-hour period that ended 10 p.m. Wednesday.
Of the 3,604 hospitalized Wednesday night, 544 were in intensive care (30 more than the previous night) and 267 were on ventilators (six more than the previous night).
Statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are up 1,239 from a week ago, or 52%, and more than triple (243%) from a month ago. The number of patients reported as of Wednesday night is approaching last winter’s peak of 3,873 patients on Dec. 22, 2020, before vaccines were widely available.
New Jersey’s statewide transmission rate, which indicates whether the pandemic is growing or shrinking, was 1.77 on Thursday, a tick up from 1.76 on Wednesday. It has been rising all week: on Monday it was 1.66 and on Tuesday it was 1.73. Any transmission rate above 1 indicates each infected person is passing the virus to at least one other person and the outbreak is expanding. If it reaches 2.0, it will indicate every infected person is passing the virus along to two people.
State Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said two weeks ago that modeling at the time showed a worst-case scenario of New Jersey peaking at 10,000 cases a day and 5,000 people hospitalized by mid-January. Those models are frequently updated, but no new predictions have been offered by the state based on the latest spike.
Officials and health experts have cited a number of reasons for why cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again. Among them is the weather and the time of year.
Winter is pushing more people inside, the holiday season is bringing gatherings, more people are getting tested because of the holidays, both the delta and omicron variants are spreading, unvaccinated residents continue getting sick, positive tests among children — including younger ones who aren’t eligible to be vaccinated — are increasing, and protection from the first round of vaccines is starting to wane.
Officials said last week while the majority of new cases in New Jersey are among unvaccinated residents, cases among fully vaccinated people are increasing, which shows protection from the first round of shots may be waning. They say booster shots help.
New Jersey also does not issue daily breakdowns of the vaccine status of those who test positive, are hospitalized, or died because of the virus. Instead, the state provides monthly and weekly overviews.
As of the first week of December, New Jersey has reported a total of 68,913 breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated people this year, leading to 1,513 hospitalizations and 350 deaths, though those represent a small percentage of total cases. Officials say vaccinated people are less likely to contract the virus and much less likely to develop life-threatening cases of COVID-19.
From Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, the state reported 27,036 positive tests. Of those, 6,082 were from fully vaccinated people and those cases led to 24 hospitalizations (out of 1,198 total) and no deaths (out of 116 total).
More than 6.41 million (about 74%) of the 8.6 million eligible people who live, work or study in New Jersey have been fully vaccinated and more than 7.27 million (or 84%) have received a first dose since vaccines began here on Dec. 15, 2020.
More than 2.20 million, or about 48% of the 4.6 million people in New Jersey eligible for third doses or boosters, have received one.
Anyone 16 and older in the U.S. who has received their second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines at least six months ago is eligible to get a booster shot. Anyone 16 and older who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also eligible for a booster two months after their single shot. In most situations, the CDC said, it recommends the Pfizer and Moderna boosters.
All of New Jersey’s 21 counties are listed as having “high” rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency is recommending that all people in high transmission counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status.
New Jersey, an early coronavirus hotspot, has now reported 29,000 deaths — 26,151 confirmed deaths and 2,849 probable deaths — in the nearly 22 months since the pandemic began here.
As of Dec. 16, the state had the third-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S., behind Mississippi and Alabama.
New Jersey has reported 1,316,312 total confirmed cases out of more than 16.5 million PCR tests conducted since the state’s first case was announced on March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 318,820 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases.
Cases continue to rise among school staff and students in New Jersey, according to new numbers released last Thursday that track infections regardless of where the transmission occurred.
For the week ending Dec. 19, with 61% of the state’s school providing data, another 9,808 confirmed cases were reported among staff (2,029) and students (7,716). That’s up from 6,947 cases — 41% higher — than the new cases the previous week.
About 1 in 4 cases statewide for that week were among school students or staff.
Since the start of the academic year, there have been 44,532 students and 10,274 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19.
The state provides total student and staff cases separately from those deemed to be in-school transmission, which is narrowly defined as three or more cases linked through contact tracing.
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Murphy said last week state officials will do “everything we can” to keep having in-person classes in schools across New Jersey after the upcoming winter break, “obviously safely and responsibly.”
At least 8,772 of the state’s COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data. There were active outbreaks at 393 — 39 more than Wednesday — resulting in 2,006 current cases among residents (293 more than Wednesday) and 3,604 cases among staffers (720 more than the day before) as of the latest data.
As of Wednesday, there have been more than 284.8 million COVID-19 cases reported across the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 5.42 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 53.75 million) and deaths (more than 823,200) of any nation.
There have been more than 9.08 billion vaccine doses administered globally.
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Josh Solomon may be reached atjsolomon@njadvancemedia.com.
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