New Jersey on Wednesday reported another 9,711 confirmed COVID-19 cases, shattering the record for the most positive tests the state has announced in any single day during the 22-month-old pandemic.
The state also reported another 28 confirmed deaths.
New Jersey’s previous one-day high for positive tests was 6,922 cases on Jan. 13, when vaccine rollout was still in its early stages.
The new mark comes as the region and country face a new winter surge, the rise of the omicron variant, and a massive demand for testing just before Christmas and New Year’s.
Statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to increase, as well, topping 2,000 patients for two straight days. They have not yet grown at the level they did during last winter, but increases in patients typically follow a week to 10 days after surges in case numbers.
The state’s daily death toll has fluctuated between zero and 40 for months.
There are a few caveats to the new record. The spike comes as significantly more people are being tested with the holidays approaching and amid fears over omicron.
Officials also note that testing was less widely available in previous waves of the pandemic, making it difficult to compare periods. For example, it’s likely the state had similar or even greater case numbers during the early days of the pandemic from March to May 2020, when the extent of the outbreak was probably undercounted because there was so little testing. The highest day in that span was 4,427 on April 23, 2020.
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 confirmed by the state.
Still, numbers are trending far in the wrong direction. Wednesday’s number caused the state’s seven-day average for new confirmed positive tests to leap to 6,925, up 79% from a week ago and 315% from a month ago. That’s the highest the average has been.
This marks a full week 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.
It’s not just that more testing is leading to an increase in positive tests. The statewide positivity rate for tests administered Friday, the most recent day available, was 13.78%.
That number is nowhere near the positivity rates between 60 and 50% the state saw at the beginning of the pandemic. Even so, the rate has been trending upward since the first week in November, when positivity was between 2.93% and 5.84%.
Plus, it’s possible there are significantly more cases in the state than being counted because high demand has made it difficult to get a test.
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 few omicron cases so far, though state officials said there are likely much more in the state because data is lagging.
RELATED: Why does it suddenly seem like everybody’s getting COVID in N.J.?
Officials are calling for New Jerseyans to be careful as they celebrate the holidays over the next two weeks. They are especially asking people to get tested before gatherings and to get vaccine booster shots.
“We can’t let our guard down against COVID-19,” Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted Wednesday. “We encourage all individuals who have received their vaccination to get a booster dose this holiday season.”
Wednesday’s record case number comes as Murphy and his family left the country for an eight-day holiday vacation to Costa Rica.
The governor has suggested in recent days that all options are “on the table” when it comes to reinstalling restrictions to combat the new surge, though he has said a statewide lockdown is unlikely.
Murphy has said the biggest focus is on preventing hospital capacity from being overwhelmed.
There were 2,100 patients hospitalized with confirmed or suspected cases across New Jersey’s 71 hospitals as of Tuesday night. That’s 66 more than the night before, despite 256 patients being discharged in the same 24-hour span. It’s also the largest number of patients since April 20, when there were 2,114 patients.
Of those hospitalized Tuesday, 392 patients were in intensive care (18 more than the previous night), with 207 of them on ventilators (21 more).
Statewide COVI9-19 hospitalizations are up 21% from a week ago and 155% from a month ago. But the number of patients reported as of Tuesday night is still 44% less than what it was Dec. 21, 2020, when 3,736 people were hospitalized in the early days of vaccine availability. Hospitalizations peaked last winter at 3,873 patients on Dec. 22, 2020.
Officials say that while vaccinated people can still catch the virus, it’s less likely they will develop severe infections.
RELATED: More N.J. towns order indoor masking as holiday COVID cases expected to surge
New Jersey’s statewide transmission rate was 1.23 Wednesday for the second straight day, after being 1.21 in each of the three days before that. Any transmission rate above 1 indicates each infected person is passing the virus to at least one other person and the outbreak is expanding.
State Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said Monday her department has restarted a monitoring program it has used before during the pandemic. If a hospital reaches 90% capacity, the department will meet to discuss how many more patients they can accept and whether they need to be sent elsewhere.
Col. Patrick Callahan, the State Police superintendent, also said Monday he has been holding calls with local officials and emergency responders about preparing for possibly reopening field medical stations if needed.
Meanwhile, Murphy said Tuesday 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.”
Officials and health experts have cited a number of reasons for why cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again: 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 will help.
New Jersey does not break down the vaccine status of those who test positive, are hospitalized, or died because of the virus each day. 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 6.36 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 7.16 million (or 83%) have received a first dose since vaccines began here on Dec. 15, 2020.
More than 1.96 million — or 43% — 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 six months ago or longer 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.
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 28,790 deaths — 25,948 confirmed deaths and 2,842 probable deaths — in the more than 21 months since the pandemic began here.
The state has the third-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S., behind Mississippi and Alabama.
New Jersey has reported 1,186,847 total confirmed cases out of more than 16.38 million PCR tests conducted since the state’s first case was announced on March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 186,365 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases.
CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage
Positive tests among students and school staff members in New Jersey have risen sharply in recent weeks as officials say current cases are affecting more and more younger residents. 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.
In-school cases spiked the week of Dec. 12, with 6,947 cases reported between students and staff — an increase of 79% from two weeks prior.
There were 5,632 new student cases and 1,315 new staff cases that week, according to state data. That’s 5.25 cases per 1,000 students, and 6.81 cases her 1,000 staff, the second week in a row New Jersey set a new high for in-school cases.
The numbers don’t include all schools in New Jersey, with about 33% not reporting statistics.
At least 8,744 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 243 facilities, resulting in 878 current cases among residents and 1,088 among staffers, as of the latest data on Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, there have been more than 276.4 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 5.37 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 51.3 million) and deaths (more than 810,400) of any nation.
There have been more than 8.79 billion vaccine doses administered globally.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @johnsb01.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
