N.J. reports 103 COVID deaths, 19,454 cases. Omicron surge shows early signs of slowing.

New Jersey on Wednesday reported another 103 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 19,454 confirmed positive tests, a day after Gov. Phil Murphy declared a new public-health emergency to battle the latest surge in the pandemic driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

That means the statewide mask mandate in schools will remain, in addition to preserving a number of other, less visible powers Murphy’s administration has utilized during the crisis.

The governor, however, insisted it will not mean any new statewide restrictions, mask mandates, vaccine passports, or gathering limits. Local governments are allowed to implement their own restrictions.

“In your day-to-day lives, this step won’t bring any changes,” Murphy said Tuesday during his latest State of the State address. “But it is vital to ensuring our continued and coordinated response so we can move forward and put COVID behind us.”

Wednesday marked first time in two weeks New Jersey has announced fewer than 20,000 confirmed cases in one day. which could be an early sign the latest wave — the fifth to hit the state — may be starting to slow.

The state’s seven-day average for new confirmed positive tests declined to 25,667, down 4% from a week ago but still up 602% from a month ago. The average has not dropped from the previous week since Nov. 9. The average at that date, however, was 1,082 confirmed positive cases.

New Jersey’s statewide transmission rate also declined Wednesday, to 1.35, down from 1.44 Tuesday. The state saw a recent high of 1.92 on Jan. 1. Any rate over 1 indicates the pandemic is still expanding. When the rate is 1, that means the outbreak has leveled off at its current numbers.

Though positive cases could be easing in the Garden State, hospitalization and deaths continue to rise. Those numbers tend to follow case trends two weeks or more later.

There were 6,089 patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases across New Jersey’s 71 hospitals of Tuesday night, up 53 from the night before and the highest number of patients since April 29, 2020.

Murphy said Monday unvaccinated people in New Jersey are testing positive at a rate of more than 2 to 1 compared to those who are vaccinated. He also said unvaccinated residents account for the vast majority of recent total hospitalizations, while the unvaccinated remain “overwhelmingly” those who are dying.

Officials and experts say there are signs that while omicron is much more contagious, it may lead to more asymptomatic or less severe cases than previous strains. They say many of the people being hospitalized recover more quickly. Scientists also say omicron-driven waves in other countries have peaked quickly and may soon do the same in the U.S.

But the latest wave in the pandemic may continue in New Jersey through January, with hospitalizations reaching about 8,000 by likely the third week of the month, state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said Monday. That would be the same as the state’s peak in hospitalizations during the first wave in April 2020.

Meanwhile, two children in New Jersey have recently died of COVID-19, Persichilli said Monday, bringing the total number of children in the state who have died since the start of the pandemic to 10.

Omicron accounted for 76% of positive tests sampled for the week ending Dec. 25, the most recent available, in New Jersey. That coincides with the sharp increase in cases that began in mid-December. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated omicron accounted for 95% of all new cases across the country during the week that ended Jan. 1.

The state’s one-day record for confirmed positive tests was 33,459 cases on Friday. Before the latest wave, the record was 6,922 cases on Jan. 13, 2021, in the early days of vaccine rollout.

Officials note it’s difficult to compare periods because that testing was less widely available in the first months of the pandemic. This uptick comes as more people are getting tested than ever before.

The state on Wednesday also reported 4,348 probable cases from rapid antigen testing. And officials note the current extent of the outbreak is likely being undercounted because at-home antigen test results are not reported to the state.

The state has reported 679 confirmed deaths this month. Officials stress that daily death reports do not reflect fatalities that occurred in the last 24 hours and reporting is sometimes delayed for days or weeks as fatalities are investigated and certified. The recent winter holidays may play a factor in those reporting delays.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The statewide positivity rate for tests conducted on Friday, the most recent day available, was 31.01% — meaning nearly 1 in 3 people who sought a test got a positive result. The rate has been above 30% since Christmas Day. New Jersey has not had positivity rates hovering around 30% since April 2020, when testing was in short supply.

All of New Jersey’s 21 counties are listed as having “high” rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the CDC. The agency is recommending that all people in high transmission counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status.

TOTAL NUMBERS

New Jersey, an early coronavirus hotspot, has now reported 29,737 deaths — 26,868 confirmed deaths and 2,869 probable deaths — in the more than 22 months since the pandemic began here.

The state has the fourth-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S., behind Mississippi, Arizona, and Alabama, according to the New York Times.

New Jersey has reported 1,653,738 total confirmed cases out of more than 16.9 million PCR tests conducted since the state’s first case was announced on March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 261,679 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases.

HOSPITALIZATIONS

The 6,089 hospitalizations due to confirmed and suspected COVID-19 infections Tuesday night were an increase of 53 patients from the night before, despite 829 patients being discharged over that same 24-hour period.

Of the people hospitalized, 919 were in intensive care (27 more than the previous night the most since May 2020) and 550 were on ventilators (50 more than the previous night and also the highest since May 2020).

Persichilli said Monday that roughly half of those currently hospitalized with confirmed cases were admitted with COVID-19 as their primary condition. The rest have COVID-19 as well as other co-existing medical conditions, she said.

This comes as some critics have wondered how many of the nation’s COVID-19 hospitalizations are of people who enter the hospital for an unrelated condition and then test positive for the virus, thus inflating the numbers.

But Persichilli said even for those who aren’t admitted for COVID-19 as their primary reason, the virus becomes a “contributing or co-morbid condition that could or could not worsen their principal diagnosis.”

“You can’t really parse it out totally,” Persichilli said.

VACCINATION NUMBERS

More than 6.48 million of the 8.6 million eligible people who live, work or study in New Jersey have been fully vaccinated and more than 7.39 million have received a first dose since vaccines began here on Dec. 15, 2020.

More than 2.44 million of the 4.95 million people in New Jersey eligible for boosters have received one.

Murphy has said booster numbers in the state are lacking, and officials will focus on increasing them in the coming weeks.

Anyone 16 and older in the U.S. who has received their second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines at least five 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.

The state does not issue daily breakdowns of the vaccine status of those who test positive, are hospitalized, or died because of the virus.

For the week ending Dec. 26, there were 31,334 breakthrough cases out of 101,000 total positive tests. Those cases led to four hospitalizations out of 2,640 total and five deaths out of 146 total fatalities that week.

As of Dec. 26, New Jersey has reported a total of 128,172 breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated people, leading to 1,687 hospitalizations and 448 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. But officials are calling on more people to get booster shots because the effectiveness of vaccination wanes over time.

SCHOOL AND NURSING HOME NUMBERS

Cases continue to rise among school staff and students in New Jersey, according to Department of Health numbers that track infections regardless of where the transmission occurred.

For the week ending Jan. 2, with just half of schools reporting data, another 28,399 confirmed cases were reported among staff (8,380) and students (20,019).

Since the start of the academic year, there have been 71,029 students and 21,014 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19, though the state has never had more than two-thirds of the school districts reporting data in any week.

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. New Jersey has reported 388 total in-school outbreaks including 2,255 students and staff.

At least 8,830 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 535 facilities, resulting in 7,709 current cases among residents and 10,721 cases among staff as of the latest data.

GLOBAL NUMBERS

As of Wednesday, there have been more than 310.8 million COVID-19 cases reported across the world, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 5.49 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 61.6 million) and deaths (more than 839,700) of any nation.

There have been more than 9.46 billion vaccine doses administered globally.

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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @johnsb01.

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