I’m so excited to open this Support and Connection center here in the Bronx along with @nycmayor today. The Bronx SCC will serve as a place where New Yorkers find the kind of connection, community and support that they need to begin the process of healing and recovery.🧵

https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1547225882976198656

Just like it’s counterpart in East Harlem, the Bronx SCC will serve to break the seemingly endless cycle of housing instability, contact with law enforcement & legal systems, and ER visits that is the reality for far too many New Yorkers with mental health & substance use issues.

Over the past two years, we’ve asked a lot of New Yorkers’ patience. And today we’re asking for a bit more patience and grace. Cases are definitively rising and it’s gotten our attention. 🧵 They will continue to rise over the next few weeks, and it is likely that over these weeks, we will move into a different level of overall risk for the City.

Alarming findings from this report about rising stress and burnout among our public health workforce: bit.ly/3qSB40G
This is a brewing mental health crisis and a major priority for me as Health Commissioner. 🧵 Over the past two years, public health workers have endured trauma and abuse. More than half report at least one symptom of PTSD and many report bullying, threats & harassment. Though you may disagree with public health officials on policy, it is not OK to harass and abuse them.

#COVID19 update for NYC: Community spread remains LOW right now based on NYC Alert levels. Hospitalizations and deaths are stable or decreasing. To assess levels of risk we look at several indicators – not just cases, consistent with CDC recommendations. We are keeping a close eye on the numbers and will continue to let you know what they tell us. At the same time, we know that the increase in cases in other parts of the world can be very worrisome.

40,000 New Yorkers have died due to COVID-19. This tragic milestone is certainly not just a number; it represents human beings who are no longer with us. It is difficult to comprehend their loss without also reflecting on what those individuals meant to their friends, families, loved ones and to our city as a whole. And we must address the toll of these losses on our collective mental health.

For my final 🧵 as @nychealthcommr, I’d like to invoke a saying that I love: “It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.” We have lived through a time filled with so many dark days, and so much suffering.

Information on the public’s health should be available to the public. I’m proud to announce @nycHealthy’s new Ensuring Transparency in Health Through Open Scholarship (ETHOS) policy, which ensures our published articles are available without a paywall. Making research and data accessible is a top priority for @nycHealthy. We strive to make info about the public’s health – your health – available in many ways.

https://twitter.com/nycHealthy/status/1469364594229587978

New data from @nychealthy on racial inequities during the omicron wave in NYC explores why dramatic inequities experienced by Black New Yorkers throughout the pandemic became worse during the most recent surge: on.nyc.gov/3C7PUVu
Key analyses and ACTIONS🧵⬇️ Structural racism is a key driver of health inequity. We use the framework of a “COVID-19 prevention cascade” to map out factors rooted in anti-Black racism and provide a roadmap for achieving racial equity in #COVID19 outcomes, for NYC and beyond. @nychealthcmo

New: Preliminary findings related to the severity and impact of the surge of #COVID19 cases associated with the introduction of the #omicron variant to NYC: on.nyc.gov/3zTIDYk
Some key findings 🧵⬇ Omicron quickly became the most prevalent variant and led to a dramatic increase in reported cases. Whereas the delta variant became the dominant variant (from 0% prevalence to more than 90% prevalence) over a period of 20 weeks, omicron became the dominant variant in five weeks.

Cardiac arrests are scary events that 350,000 Americans experience outside of hospitals each year, and only 10% survive. This story about my friend @kevin_volpp, a doctor & renowned researcher, highlights all the things that need to go right for survival.
heart.org/en/news/2021/1… First, @kevin_volpp was with people who knew CPR and jumped into action right away. Then, first responders were called immediately and were able to use a defibrillator (AED) on him -- a critical device that can shock a heart back into rhythm if needed -- within a few minutes.

.@nycHealthy's World Trade Center Health Registry recently investigated the association between 9/11-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dust exposure and stroke among nearly 30,000 people in the Registry. 🧵
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100… PTSD was significantly associated with increased risk of stroke. The likelihood of having recurrent strokes was also higher among those with PTSD versus those without PTSD.

In the winter of 1893-94, there was a smallpox outbreak in Brooklyn. While that was a long time ago — Brooklyn wouldn’t officially become part of NYC for another 4 years — many of the strategies used to fight the outbreak look familiar to us today. 🧵 Thanks to @NYCRecords’ efforts to digitize an enormous number of records from the municipalities that eventually became part of NYC as we know it, we can see how the Kings County Board of Health acted to stem the smallpox outbreak and keep residents safe.

Pediatric hospitalizations for #COVID19 have increased in New York City as part of the Omicron surge, particularly among unvaccinated children. 🧵

https://twitter.com/DrMaryTBassett/status/1479523963936165890

Statewide, during the week of December 20th, 91% of 5-11 year old children hospitalized were unvaccinated, and 65% of 12- to 17-year-olds admitted were unvaccinated.
health.ny.gov/press/releases…

Hearing about “flu-rona” in the news? Co-infection with influenza and COVID-19 is not new. NYC has seen some cases of co-infection, and this is expected. That’s why we have been encouraging all New Yorkers to get BOTH their flu & COVID-19 vaccines. 🧵
washingtonpost.com/health/2022/01… The previous flu season in NYC was unusually mild, partially due to the public health measures we had in place to prevent COVID-19. This year, flu is circulating widely in NYC.

Resources for New Yorkers during the #omicron surge, from @nycHealthy and @NYCHealthSystem 🧵⬇

If you need a COVID-19 test, and are immunocompromised and 65 years or older, schedule an appointment to have your test done at home.
☎ Call 929-298-9400

https://twitter.com/FDNY/status/1478351187309215746

We also continue to ramp up free COVID-19 testing capacity at dozens of community-based sites through mobile testing vans and clinics. Find a testing site near you here: on.nyc.gov/3F3q9Fw

During the COVID-19 pandemic, @nycHealthy had to develop new ways to understand the impact of the pandemic on physical health, mental health, and social determinants of health – so we pivoted and adapted our survey tools to better fill this need: ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJ… @nycHealthy conducts routine surveys to understand the health of NYC residents. When COVID-19 hit, we adjusted our strategies and developed new surveys that gave us actionable insights into the pandemic and NYC’s health and explicitly incorporated measures of racial inequities.

Today’s “Stay Safe, Stay Open” plan for @NYCSchools reaffirms our dual mission to keep schools safe and prioritize in-person learning in the new year – even as we make some adjustments due to #Omicron. 🧵 What we know from our data over the school year so far is that schools remain among the safest settings in our communities. For any case identified in an NYC public school between October to December, only 1 in 120 close contacts developed COVID-19 – that’s 0.83%.

Omicron is here in NYC and spreading quickly. We’re seeing a surge of #COVID19 cases ahead of the holidays – the 7-day average for new cases has tripled in the last month. All boroughs remain in high transmission. 🧵 In response to the increase in #COVID19 cases, I am updating my November Commissioner’s Advisory to call on New Yorkers to take additional steps to protect themselves and each other: on.nyc.gov/3dVZ2B9

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented interest in public health data. Early in the pandemic, we knew it was crucial to share data in useful ways. Our team recently published our strategy and approach to sharing data in @AJPH: ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJ… 🧵 When @nycHealthy began publishing COVID-19 data webpages, we wanted to do so in ways that made the data accessible and useful to everyone — policymakers, journalists, researchers and all New Yorkers. Since April 2020, our data pages have been viewed over 20 million times.

Update on the omicron variant: There are currently NO confirmed cases of the omicron variant in NYC. Delta remains the dominant strain – about 98% of sequenced specimens. We do anticipate detecting omicron in the coming days, based on what we know about its global spread.🧵 A lot is still unknown about omicron, because it’s so early, but studies are underway, and we will know more about the variant in the coming weeks. Here is a breakdown of what we currently know in terms of transmissibility, severity and immunity:

At @nycHealthy, our recommendations for New Yorkers are grounded in science. That’s why we have been recommending ALL New Yorkers get vaccinated against #COVID19, even if you’ve been infected before or have antibodies. 🧵 We've received several questions from people who ask why vaccination is necessary if they’ve already had COVID-19 — aren’t they protected due to “natural immunity”? The bottom line is clear: your best protection is vaccination. The evidence ⬇