Community Corner
Driven By Delta Variant, COVID Cases Quadruple In NJ
"I'm begging you, please, get vaccinated," Governor Phil Murphy said.
NEW JERSEY - The Garden State's COVID-19 positivity rate has quadrupled from last month, prompting Governor Phil Murphy to literally beg for those choosing to remain unvaccinated to change their mind.
"I’m begging you, please, get vaccinated,” Murphy said at Monday's COVID-19 briefing.
Health officials say the rise in cases is due to the prevalence of the delta variant, which was first seen in India and was first detected in the United States in March. This mutation of the virus spreads 50 percent more quickly than the alpha variant first seen in Great Britain, which itself spreads 50 percent more quickly than the original coronavirus strain, according to Yale Medicine.
Find out what's happening in Bridgewaterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
It accounted for 53.2 percent of coronavirus cases in New Jersey over a four-week period ending on July 3, CDC numbers show. Just over half of the national coronavirus cases during a two-week period during that span involved the delta variant, Reuters reported.
New Jersey has among the highest vaccination rates in the country. As of Tuesday, 5,083,333 New Jersey residents that were eligible to be vaccinated against the coronavirus were fully vaccinated.
Find out what's happening in Bridgewaterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
But the numbers are also going up. New Jersey's infection rate is up to 3.84 percent, and hospitalizations are up, according to the numbers released by the New Jersey Department of Health on Tuesday. The 792 new cases and 442 new hospitalizations in Tuesday's report stands a stark contrast to last month, and Murphy noted that there has been an increase in hospitalizations by about 30 percent in the past two weeks.
Murphy stressed that the only way to tamp down these surging numbers is to increase vaccination rates.
“It’s not scare tactics, and I mean that,” Murphy said. “We’re not trying to do that. We’re trying to be very blunt, though, about what the data is.”
Before you go:
- Send a news tip or correction to: russ.crespolini@patch.com
- Subscribe to your local Patch newsletter.
- Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
