As new COVID variant arrives in NYC, here’s how to track the back-to-school surge

 

A late-summer COVID surge is adding even more stress to an already busy time of year.

Next week, undervaccinated kids will return to New York City classrooms without many of the precautions that marked previous pandemic-era school years. And the city health commissioner warned this week that the new BA.2.86 variant has arrived and may be more likely to sidestep people’s pre-existing immunity, making people vulnerable to reinfection.

It’s also hard to know exactly how bad the surge will be. Because of changes in how officials and clinics test for and track the virus, old data standbys — cases, test positivity and community transmission levels — don’t mean as much as they once did.

“It really is hard to look at cases and conclude much beyond whether community transmission is on the rise or not,” said Denis Nash, an epidemiology professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health. “It doesn't really help us quantify what really is a surge.”...

As new COVID variant arrives in NYC, here’s how to track the back-to-school surge - Gothamist