Most new COVID-19 patients in NY not working, older, survey finds

The great majority of people newly hospitalized with the coronavirus in New York are either retired or unemployed and were avoiding public transit, according to a new state survey, the first such look at people still getting seriously ill despite six weeks of severe social distancing.

The survey of 1,269 patients admitted to 113 hospitals over three recent days confounds expectations that new cases would be dominated by essential workers, especially those regularly traveling on subways and buses.

Retirees accounted for 37 percent of the people hospitalized. Another 46% were unemployed. Almost three-quarters were 51 years or older. Only 17% were working.

Only 4% were still using public transportation in their daily life, they survey finds, though it also notes that information on transit use was only available for about half the people surveyed.

“We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work, that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. That’s not the case,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo says at his daily briefing.

The survey also shows, however, that 18% of the people admitted to hospitals with the virus had been transferred from nursing homes, underscoring the difficulty those facilities have had controlling infections.

People were far less likely to be hospitalized in other institutional settings. Fewer than 1% were in jails; 4% were in assisted living; 2% in congregate housing and 2% were homeless.

It also finds that African-Americans and Hispanics were being hospitalized at far greater rates that whites, mirroring other studies.

— AP