COVID transmission rates in New York City are surging so aggressively, roughly 1.7% of all Manhattan residents have been infected in just the last week, according to the latest data posted by the city Thursday.
Over the last seven days, for every 100,000 Manhattan residents, about 1,672 have been infected, the city said in a transmission chart on its COVID data site.
And that's just an average - in some Manhattan neighborhoods, the numbers are astronomically higher. In Greenwich Village and SoHo, it's 2,927 cases per 100,000; in Chelsea, 2,513 per 100,000.
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At those rates, Greenwich Village would dwarf just about any current outbreak spot, anywhere. According to the New York Times' data, Washington D.C., where omicron is raging like wildfire, is "only" up to 158 cases per 100,000.
The problem in Greenwich Village is a microcosm of what's happening citywide, where more than 17,000 people tested positive Tuesday. Based on the latest NBC News data, that means roughly 7% of all new daily infections nationwide are happening in the city.
New York City officials are scrambling to increase test capacity, launching a program Thursday in the five boroughs to hand out thousands of free at-home testing kits daily.
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Of course, this is just a recent trend driven by the omicron variant; over the long-term, North Dakota remains the most infected place in America, with more than 22% of residents having tested positive over the course of the pandemic.
And as the city points out, while cases are surging, that is not translating as acutely to hospitalizations, which are rising but still at levels far below past peaks. As of this week, the NYC COVID hospitalization rate is 2.46 per 100,000 residents -- a doubling over two weeks, but a small number compared to the 13 per 100,000 in the worst days of 2020.
