ALBANY COUNTY — “This is a health-care crisis and people are going to die. It’s not hyperbole,” said Governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday morning in Albany, answering questions after her first cabinet meeting.

Mary Bassett, the state’s acting health commissioner, showed a series of charts and graphs, indicating the effect Omicron, the recently identified, highly transmissible COVID-19 variant, could have.

Bassett’s first graph showed last summer’s lull in transmission until the start of the surge caused by Delta, a variant first described in India, the fourth variant of concern labeled by the World Health Organization, which is now dominant in the United States.

“And now we’re at the winter surge, something that was anticipated because as the weather gets colder, more people go inside, and also more people were mixing in ways that they didn’t do a year ago,” said Bassett, describing the current surge as “substantial.”

“Hospitalizations are the highest that we’ve seen in months and are still going up,” she said.

At the same time, the rate for uptake of vaccinations has flattened.

Bassett then presented tables explaining exponential spread of a virus.

It is thought that each person infected with the Delta variant can infect one-and-a-half to two people. After 10 cycles of transmission — in which one person would infect two; those two people would infect four; those four people would infect eight, and so on — 2,047 people would be infected.

If 10 percent of them were sick enough to be hospitalized, that would lead to about 200 hospitalizations.

With a more contagious variant, like Omicron, the total number of infected people becomes huge, Bassett said. If each person infected four people, after 10 cycles, nearly 1.4 million people would be infected.

Many Omicron cases have been breakthrough infections — that is, infections of people who were vaccinated.

Even if only 1 percent — rather than 10 percent — were sick enough to be hospitalized, that means close to 14,000 people would be hospitalized.

Bassett displayed a graph showing infection rates in Norway and Denmark: Once Omicron appeared, the graph lines went nearly straight up.

Bassett described the two Scandinavian countries as being “highly vaccinated,” and as having populations with an age distribution more like the United States than South Africa, where the Omicron variant was first reported.

Over 86 percent of Norwegians are vaccinated against COVID-19 yet the country is currently experiencing the highest level of infection and of coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.

Over 90 percent of Denmark residents are vaccinated yet Norway is now at its peak for infections.

About 23 percent of South Africans are vaccinated, where infections are now at their peak.

About 72 percent of the United States population has received at least one dose of vaccine.

Even if Omicron is much less likely to cause severe disease, which seems to be the case, Bassett said, “if you have a lot of people infected, even a small proportion will lead to big numbers” of hospitalizations.

As of Thursday, 59 confirmed cases of Omicron have been reported in New York State: 30 in New York City, 14 in Suffolk County, six in Nassau County, four in Oneida County, two in Tompkins County, and one each in Broome, Onondaga, and Westchester counties.

“We also can’t forget that with winter comes seasonal influenza,” said Bassett.

She displayed a graph showing hardly any flu cases last year, when people were isolated.

“But this year we’re already ahead of where we were in the last big flu season two years ago,” said Bassett. “So we’re concerned also about flu and the fact that we have both of these in our midst.”

Reiterating Bassett’s message, Hochul said that people are underestimating the power of Omicron: “You may only have 1 percent of people infected hospitalized versus 10 percent from Delta, but if you have a million more people infected because it’s spread so much more quickly, that means you’ll have overflowing hospitals at this rate,” said Hochul.

Hochul also said she had lost members of her extended family who refused to get vaccinated on principle of their personal liberties and freedoms.

“People have a right to stay alive and people that you affect have a right to live as well,” said Hochul. “And that’s something we all should remember.”

Answering reporters’ questions about the statewide mask mandate that went into effect on Monday, Hochul acknowledged “a few outlier counties,” resisting the mandate. “This is not the wild West,” she said.

She also said, “The best way to do this is self-enforcing.” Wearing masks, she said, is really up to individual people and businesses.

Asked what would be next after the mask mandate, Hochul said she has been focused on staffed hospital-bed capacity. 

Her two missions all along, she said, have been protecting the health of New Yorkers and protecting the health of the economy.

“Right now, we can do both,” she said. Hochul added later that she doesn’t want to shut down ever again.

With the earlier shutdown, Hochul said, businesses were knocked down to their knees and many survived only with federal aid, which may not be there in the future.

She encouraged people to get vaccinated and boosted, to wear masks, and to get tested frequently.

“I’m trying to inject a sense of calm ….,” said Hochul. “We do not want to be Denmark. We do not want to be Norway …. I cannot project the end; no one can.”

Jobs up in NYS

The state’s labor department released figures on Thursday showing private-sector jobs increased over the month by 24,200, or 0.3 percent, to 7,614,800 in November 2021.

By comparison, the number of private sector jobs in the United States increased by 0.2 percent.

Over the year, New York State’s private-sector jobs (not seasonally adjusted) increased by 315,100, or 4.3 percent.

The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area in that time period saw an increase of 8,100 jobs or 1.8 percent.

By comparison, the number of private sector jobs in the U.S. increased by 4.6 percent over the year.

 New York State’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased from 6.9 percent to 6.6 percent in November 2021.

During the year, the segment with the biggest increase in jobs was leisure and hospitality with 118,700 more jobs, an increase of 19.4 percent.

Albany County

Albany County has hit the 70 percent mark for vaccinating residents.

“While our battle with COVID is far from over as we once again report 200 new infections in Albany County since yesterday, today also marks an important milestone now that more than 70 percent of all county residents have gotten either the Johnson & Johnson single dose or two doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines,” said Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy in his daily COVID release. “This was possible thanks to a packed schedule of school-based vaccination clinics we’ve been running, where our teams have been able to administer nearly 1,200 doses in less than two weeks.

“The data continues to show that getting vaccinated is the best protection against hospitalization and death after contracting COVID, but we also know the effectiveness of the vaccines tends to wane over time, so we continue to urge those who are at least 16 years old and have been vaccinated for more than six months to get the booster as soon as possible.”

McCoy reported 213 new cases of COVID-19, putting the county’s seven-day average of new daily positive cases at 173.5.

There are now 612 active cases in Albany County, up from 593 on Wednesday. The number of county residents under quarantine increased to 1,265 from 1,187.

There were seven new hospitalizations since yesterday, and there are now 65 county residents hospitalized with the coronavirus — a net decrease of one. Eight of those hospital patients are now in intensive-care units, down from nine on Wednesday.

The county’s COVID-19 death toll remains at 457.