NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - One New York City subway line was suspended Wednesday (Dec 29), and five others were running with delays because so many workers were out sick.
Twenty CityMD locations, where thousands of New Yorkers go to get tested for the coronavirus, were closed because of staffing shortages caused by the virus.
The Police Department has cancelled days off for any officer healthy enough to work. Nearly 1 in 3 paramedics are out sick, and the Fire Department begged New Yorkers not to call 911 unless they were truly experiencing an emergency, after a spate of calls from people who were just looking for an ambulance ride to a hospital to get a coronavirus test.
Broadway shows are closing even as others reopen. Libraries are shuttering left and right.
New York City is exhausted, beleaguered and riddled with coronavirus thanks to the Omicron variant. More than 110,000 people have tested positive just since Christmas Day, and the positivity rate in some neighbourhoods is approaching 30 per cent.
Some hospitals in the city are under stress: Mount Sinai Health System said Wednesday it was deferring elective surgeries when possible.
But as Year Two of the pandemic limps offstage to make way for Year Three, New York remains open, with piecemeal slowdowns and closings.
Omicron, Mayor Bill de Blasio told New Yorkers shortly before Christmas, would provide the city with a "challenging few weeks," banking on the uncertain proposition that the variant would follow the trend set in South Africa, one of the first countries to identify it.
But because Omicron appears to cause milder disease than earlier iterations of the virus, because more than 80 per cent of New Yorkers are fully vaccinated, and because he has ordered a vaccine mandate for all private-sector employers, he said he did not see a need for a 2020-style lockdown.
And so the city is carrying on with plans for a limited Times Square New Year's Eve ball drop, even as the chairman of the City Council's Health Committee urged Mr de Blasio on Wednesday (Dec 29) to cancel the celebration - as Rome, Paris and Tokyo have done with theirs.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams one-upped Mr de Blasio, announcing Wednesday that he would take the oath of office in Times Square shortly after the midnight ball drop.
Governor Kathy Hochul announced a new statewide record of 67,000 daily cases Wednesday - nearly 20,000 more than the previous record set Dec 24 - and said that Covid-related hospital admissions jumped 10 per cent in a single day and that deaths neared 100 for the first time in months.
New York City also set a record, with 39,591 new cases announced Wednesday by the governor's office, nearly 30 per cent more than the old record of 31,024, also set Dec. 24.
And the city's Covid hospitalisations are up to more than 2,700 - but the number of Covid patients in intensive care was 350 earlier this week, less than half the number during last winter's surge.
The virus's pressure was evident in many different arenas in the city.
In the high-profile sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate, the judge ordered the jury Tuesday to deliberate through the New Year's weekend if necessary, because it was only a matter of time before jurors or others involved might have to quarantine, risking a mistrial.
Signs of a half-shut city were everywhere. The W subway line was suspended early Wednesday. Clicking the status button for the A, D, E, N and R trains brought up a message: "You may wait longer" for a train, it said.
"We're running as much service as we can with the train crews we have available."
In downtown Brooklyn, Ms Wanda Ortiz, who has had a fever, body aches and a scratchy throat since Christmas, summoned the strength to head over to the CityMD on Atlantic Avenue on Wednesday morning to get tested. The clinic was dark.
"You've got to be kidding me," Ms Ortiz, 68, said as she read the note on the door. She wandered off to find another testing site, hoping she would not have to stand in line too long in the cold.
