My second COVID-19 test as ‘outbreaks’ beckon

“An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.”

—James Lovelock

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

AS New York City relived some of the nightmares it endured earlier this spring when coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases reportedly began to surge, I immediately visited CityMD Urgent Care, currently offering two forms of COVID-19 testing at all locations—the PCR (Nasal Swab) test and the Serum Antibody IgG (Blood Test) in Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights, New York City on October 2.

It was my second SARS-Cov-2 (the coronavirus’ official name) test in two months and two days.

My first nasal swab test was made by MedExpress in Ledgewood, New Jersey on July 31.

Like the result of my test in New Jersey, my nasal swab test result in New York City was “not detected”; meaning I was “negative” anew. 

We also noticed some New York City residents starting to form a beeline in COVID-19 testing centers in Queens, Bronx, Manhattan, Long Island, and Brooklyn as of Monday.

While we don’t interpret this (nasal swab test) as a possible part of a “panic mood” among worried New Yorkers, we deem it necessary as a “precautionary measure” to say the least.

The reported latest outbreaks have sparked fears of a second wave in America’s biggest city, once the national epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. 

It was reported earlier that nine zip codes with large Orthodox Jewish communities have formed the nucleus of rising cases, and city officials have warned for weeks that it’s begun to spread to surrounding neighborhoods—a Pandora’s Box that could send the Big Apple back to the days of overflowing morgues and war-zone hospitals.

 

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As this developed, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio held a marathon call October 3 evening with more than a dozen city officials and public health experts, it was reported. 

Assured that the uptick was a sustained trend, and not an anomaly, the mayor reportedly made a surprise announcement October 4 that he was ordering the shutdown of schools and businesses across those nine neighborhoods.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has the ultimate authority over the decision, however, hadn’t reportedly fully signed off. 

The governor, a fellow Democrat, held his own news conference October 5 to announce he would not close the businesses, though he would close schools a day earlier than the mayor suggested. 

Cuomo then chided de Blasio “for not being more aggressive on enforcing public health guidelines.”

 

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The city and state have better testing now, better equipment and supplies, and a better handle on how the coronavirus spreads than they did in March and April and public health officials still believe the new outbreaks can be contained.

But they also have the same political infighting between Cuomo and de Blasio, public health officials and powerful community leaders none of which has allayed fears about a new wave as the city heads into the winter months.

These public disagreements between the governor and the mayor are not helpful,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia and once an informal adviser to the mayor as quoted by Politico.

“To have the mayor overridden by the governor of New York State, it is not acceptable. If he’s got a difference with the mayor, call him up, come to a conclusion, yell at him. This should not be in the public forum.”

After days of discord over how to address rising coronavirus cases in Orthodox Jewish areas, Cuomo finally imposed tough new restrictions on parts of New York City and its northern suburbs that would have an especially pronounced impact on synagogues and other houses of worship on October 6.

The governor also detailed an array of new rules that would shut down schools, restaurants, bars and gyms in portions of Brooklyn and Queens, as well as in Rockland and Orange Counties and in Binghamton.

The governor’s order was intended to end confusion over how the state and city government would address the spreading outbreak in neighborhoods with large populations of Orthodox Jews, some of whom have flouted limits on gatherings, officials said.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo)