THE HOT ZONE
Southern Brooklyn sees COVID surge
Area among city’s highest virus positivity test rate
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COURIER L 4 IFE, JAN. 29-FEB. 4, 2021
BY JESSICA PARKS
Three southern Brooklyn
neighborhoods — Sheepshead
Bay, Manhattan Beach,
and parts of Brighton Beach
— are currently among the
areas of the city with the
highest positivity rate for
COVID-19 tests.
City testing data shows
16.17 percent of all tests administered
in the 11235 zip
code produced positive results
during the 7-day period
from Jan. 18 through Jan. 24,
when the most recent data is
available.
Some 461 new coronavirus
cases cropped up that week
in the area, which is substantially
more new cases than
the next highest zip code,
10467 in the Bronx.
The 11224 zip code covering
Brighton Beach and
Coney Island is just behind
11235’s testing positivity
rate, with 14.08 percent of
tests coming back positive.
Sunset Park’s 11220 zip
code is the only other area of
Brooklyn to crack the top ten
highest positivity rate in the
city.
Throughout Brooklyn,
the positive testing rate sits
at 7.66 percent. Across the
Five Boroughs, where the
rate has hovered just above 9
percent, health offi cials have
recorded 27,756 new cases
over the seven days ending
on Jan. 24.
Theresa Scavo, chairwoman
of the area’s Community
Board 15, attributes
the recent spike in southern
Brooklyn cases to people
dropping their guard to
BY THE NUMBERS
spend the holidays with family
members.
“People are getting crazy,
they have been locked in
their homes for months,”
Scavo said. “You had the holidays,
people want to be with
friends and family, and they
let their guard down, that’s
what happening.”
She told Brooklyn Paper
the community board
has also received multiple
reports from residents of
store employees not wearing
masks inside their businesses
and people not wearing
masks when walking on
the waterfront.
“The community board
has received a lot of complaints
that there are certain
stores that the personnel of
the stores are not wearing
masks,” Scavo said. “People
are mentioning that they are
walking around in certain
areas, along the waterfront,
and people are not wearing
masks.”
Area Councilman Chaim
Deutsch, however, suggests
the increase in COVID-19
rates could result from city
dwellers traveling to his
district for its recreational
spaces, such as the waterfront,
and also from caretakers
coming from different
areas of the city to treat the
district’s high population of
elderly people.
“Because there is so much
activity and so many places
people can actually go to,
you tend to have more people
congregating in certain areas,”
My district has a very
high population of seniors...
where they also have homecare
attendants.”
Deutsch recommends the
city government dispatch
people to knock on doors to
educate residents on the importance
of wearing a mask,
washing their hands and social
distancing to combat the
spreading of misinformation
about the coronavirus on social
media.
BK COVID stats, Jan. 20 – Jan. 27
7.66%
Test positivity rate
1,500
New cases per day
22
Deaths per day
673,405
Vaccine doses given citywide
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