LOCAL NEWS
COVID cases
plummeting
in Manhattan
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
Almost every indicator
that the city’s Health
Department uses to
track COVID-19 shows that
the sharp uptick in infections
in New York City connected
to the Omicron variant
continues to drop just
as dramatically.
Many of the areas with the
fewest COVID-19 cases were
located in lower Manhattan,
specifi cally the Financial
District, Battery Park City
and Tribeca.
The Five Boroughs, however,
are far from out of the
woods on this latest crisis.
Almost every corner of the
city has a positivity rate of
above 10%, transmission remains
New Yorkers should still get tested and vaccinated
even as COVID-19 cases decline following
the Omicron-fueled wave.
very high (more than 1,000 cases
per 100,000 people), and thousands
of new cases are being detected daily.
Still, New York City fi nds itself in a
much better place now than it did just
two weeks ago, when the 7-day positivity
rate exceeded 32% and 23 communities
saw rates above 40%. As of Jan.
21, the city’s 7-day positivity rate was
down to 17.67% and falling, and not
one neighborhood in the Five Boroughs
had a rate exceeding 30%.
In all, 49 areas of the city saw 7-day
positivity rates of 20% or higher between
Jan. 12-18. Queens communities
were largely at the top of the list;
seven of the 15 areas with the highest
positivity rates were located in “The
World’s Borough.”
Just three neighborhoods of New
York City had seen 1,000 or more new
COVID-19 cases between Jan. 12-18,
with the most coming from Sunset
Park, Brooklyn (11220), which had
1,301 new infections and a 24.8%
positivity rate.
On the opposite side of the spectrum,
three New York City areas had
a 7-day positivity rate of 10% or less.
The Financial District of Manhattan
(10004) had the lowest rate at 7.41%,
with 24 new cases detected.
The citywide transmission rate plummeted
REUTERS/CARLO ALLEGRI
signifi cantly, dropping by more
than half, over the past week, from
2,230.56 cases per 100,000 people on
Jan. 11 to 1,031.33 cases per 100,000
on Jan. 18.
Two areas of the city saw a transmission
rate on Jan. 18 below the citywide
rate: the Bronx (941.26 per 100,000)
and Manhattan (914.16 per 100,000).
Vaccines are keeping more New
Yorkers from serious illness and death,
as the Health Department data shows.
Unvaccinated New Yorkers, as of
Jan. 8, were about 13 times more likely
to contract COVID-19, 18 times more
likely to be hospitalized, and 17 times
more likely to die from the illness than
vaccinated New Yorkers.
The case rate for unvaccinated New
Yorkers was 13,073.69 per 100,000;
by comparison, the rate for vaccinated
residents was just 1,019.88 per
100,000. Hospitalization rates for the
unvaxxed were 517.88 compared to
28.47 for vaccinated New Yorkers;
and the death rate was 25.76 for the
unvaccinated and 1.54 for the vaccinated.
The vaccines do not guarantee that
you’ll avoid COVID-19 altogether,
but they have proven to be very effective
at reducing the severity of
symptoms, or helping individuals be
completely asymptomatic.
HIGHER ED TODAY
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The opening of the spring semester
for CUNY comes with great news for students
and faculty on all our campuses,
and for public higher education in New
York State. In January, Governor Kathy
Hochul announced a budget plan that
will allow CUNY to hire more than 500
new full-time faculty members, an investment
that is so pivotal to our longterm
strategies that we made it the top
priority in the University’s proposed
budget request for the next fiscal year.
The funding for new faculty hires
— part of the governor’s proposal to
increase state support for CUNY and
SUNY by more than $1.5 billion over the
next five years — marks a seminal advancement
of our historical mission to
provide high-quality education to New
Yorkers of all backgrounds and means.
Increasing the number and proportion
of full-time faculty has direct bearing on
student success and retention, and the
benefits are also substantial for faculty.
The state’s investment will bring
more stability to many of the courses
we offer, especially introductory classes
that many times prove the hardest to engage
students. Because some of the new
full-time hires will likely come from the
ranks of current CUNY faculty adjuncts,
the new state funding will also create a
critical career pathway for some of our
dedicated and talented part-time faculty.
And it will help us in our ongoing efforts
to increase the diversity of our faculty.
An added benefit of the increase in
full-time faculty is that it will bolster
our academic departments throughout
the University, whose faculty have made
numerous and important contributions
in their respective fields. It will reduce
the amount of time department chairs
need to spend on hiring, evaluations and
related administrative tasks, freeing
them to focus more broadly on creating a
more collegial departmental life, building
curricula and improving courses
and advising to better serve their students’
needs.
An Unprecedented Approach
One of the reasons I am so excited
is that many of the new full-time faculty
will be assigned to entry-level and
gateway courses with high numbers of
students who struggle. These courses
are often taught by part-time faculty
who often don’t get the chance to teach
a particular class over successive semesters.
Full-time faculty have the benefit
of more time to work with students
and to develop advisory and mentoring
relationships that can make the difference
between a student who perseveres
to overcome obstacles and one who gives
up and drops out. Full-time faculty also
have time to revise and improve their
courses, refine their teaching methods
over time and develop new offerings to
serve our students.
We also won’t simply be hiring people
and sending them into classrooms.
Instead, from the moment the first group
of new faculty join us they will be invited
to participate in CUNY’s Innovative
Teaching Academy, which we began
in 2020 to improve teaching and encourage
faculty throughout the University
to adopt proven pedagogy and high-impact
best practices. It’s the kind of professional
development for faculty that I
have long believed is sorely lacking in
higher education. This onboarding of
such a large group of new faculty is unprecedented
at CUNY, and very rare in
general.
Moving forward, continued investments
will further solidify the University’s
research programs, scholarship and
creative work, and targeted hires in the
sciences will grow and support the University’s
research pipeline and support
for STEM students.
Universities across the country, especially
public ones, have been contending
with their over-reliance on parttime
teachers for many years. It’s been
a particularly important issue for us at
CUNY, and for me personally since I assumed
leadership of the University in
2019. Governor Hochul’s budget marks a
turning point in our efforts, a major vote
of confidence for public higher education
in New York and an investment in
the success of our students that will pay
dividends for years to come.
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10 January 27, 2022 Schneps Media