Wednesday, January 13, 2021

COVID cases rise again in Katz's office, new strain found in Queens resident from undisclosed location and the city is out of vaccines

 


Patch

 A cluster of coronavirus cases among employees of the Queens District Attorney's Office, who continue to work in-person at reduced capacity, has forced colleagues into quarantine and has the agency warning employees that "it is best practice to assume that everyone has been exposed," as one administrator put it.

At least 10 employees with the Queens District Attorney's Office have reported testing positive for COVID-19 since Friday, according to emails from Chief of Staff Camille Chin-Kee-Fatt that were reviewed by Patch.

The cases include four employees who work in felony trial bureau two and the appeals and detective bureaus, according to an email sent to employees Wednesday. The divisions where the other six work were not disclosed.

Employees, at least some of whom have been working in-person since October, are now being urged to limit contact with others and conduct meetings virtually.

"I think it is best practice to assume that everyone has been exposed and act accordingly by wearing face coverings and limiting any in-person contact," Chin-Kee-Fatt wrote in an email Monday. "We must limit our contact at this time as much as we can, which includes meeting and IT/Facilities repairs."

LIC Post

A Queens resident has tested positive for the highly-transmissible variant of COVID-19, city officials announced Wednesday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a news conference that the variant, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, had been detected in two New York City residents. One resident is from Queens, the other from Manhattan.

One of them had recently traveled to the U.K., although officials did not say which one. Furthermore, officials declined to identify the neighborhoods where the residents live, citing privacy concerns.

Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, said that both people had been diagnosed with coronavirus in late December, and genetic sequencing showed that their infections had been from the U.K. variant “within the past few hours.”

Patch 

 More COVID-19 vaccine shots are going into more New Yorkers' arms at more places this week than any time since doses first arrived. There's only one problem: New York City could run out of vaccines next week.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday warned that the city's cache of vaccines may not be enough to keep up with supply.

The federal government and manufacturers need to step up and send more to the city, he said.

"I confirmed with our health care team yesterday that even with the normal supplies that we expect to have delivered next week that we will run out of vaccine at some point next week, unless we get a major new resupply," he said.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Di Blasio,donors to the front of the line please,step aside serf.