HIGHEST REQUESTS OF MEALS/FOOD IN WESTCHESTER EVER (200,000 PLUS)) WESTCHESTER PLANS SURVEY OF FOOD, TRANSPORTATION NEEDS

Posted on October 12, 2023 by John Bailey

WESTCHESTER COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING

LAUNCHES TRANSPORTATION AND FOOD ACCESS STUDY

EDITOR’S NOTE: IN A WEBINAR TUESDAY EVENING FEEDING WESTCHESTER REPORTED THIS FALL THEY HAVE RECEIVED THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF REQUESTS FOR GROCERY NEEDS IN THEIR HISTORY. THE WHITE PLAINS SALVATION ARMY AS OF THE FIRST WEEK IN OCTOBER WHEN REQUESTS FOR FOOD WERE CALLED FOR STATED THAT ORGANIZATION TOO HAS EXPERIENCED THE MOST REQUESTS FOR FOOD, TOO. TODAY, WESTCHESTER COUNTY ANNOUNCED A FOOD ACCESS AND TRANSPORTATION STUDY OF THE FOOD CRISIS (AFFECTING 20% OR MORE OF THE COUNTY POPULATION, ACCORDING TO FEEDING WESTCHESTER

(White Plains, NY) – The Westchester County Department of Planning, with the support of the Department of Health, is launching a survey as part of its Transportation and Food Access Study. The survey asks Westchester residents ages 18 and older to share their experiences travelling to get groceries, as well as information on the type and affordability of food available to them in the County.

The goal of the study is to develop effective strategies to increase Westchester County resident access to affordable, quality food, with the goal of decreasing food insecurity, improving health outcomes, and increasing the quality of life in Westchester. The study will include a County-wide analysis, as well as a more detailed examination of a yet to be determined smaller study area.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer said: “The entire purpose of this study is for the County to find out more about the obstacles that stand in the way of our residents accessing affordable, nutritious food. We want to increase accessibility to the groceries that people truly need so our residents can live longer, healthier lives. I encourage anyone who has a few minutes to participate in this survey, to help us decrease food insecurity across Westchester.”

Westchester County Commissioner of Planning Blanca Lopez said:

“The Planning Department is excited to launch this survey County-wide to obtain much needed primary information on how Westchester County residents access food.

Survey responses will help us identify challenges as well as better understand the experiences that survey-takers have in accessing affordable and nutritious food. We are grateful to our colleagues in the Health Department, as well as our partners from community-based organizations who are helping us with survey distribution and data collection, so that our study can develop effective strategies and recommendations to increase food access to as many County residents as possible.”

The anonymous survey is available in English and in Spanish online, as well as hard copy now through November 17. The assessment seeks to identify how Westchester residents access groceries, what types of groceries are available to them, and what obstacles exist accessing groceries.

Some of the issues that will be explored include: Improving transit, pedestrian and bicycle connection to existing food sources; improving food distribution and delivery options; and changes to zoning, land use and other municipal policies to increase the availability of groceries.

The survey will be distributed via email to a diverse range of community groups, and will be available on paper and via QR code on fliers placed in public locations such as food pantries, public transit, hospitals, clinics and County offices. Health Department staff also will be onsite at some locations to help promote the survey.

The survey is part of the Transportation and Food Access Study administered by the Westchester County Department of Planning, and conducted by the planning firm Steer. The results of the survey will be analyzed alongside targeted stakeholder outreach and available data to identify existing challenges related to food access in Westchester County.

Posted on October 12, 2023 by John Bailey

THE CLIMATE OF RESPIRATORY HEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES FROM YOUR LOCAL EPIDEMIOLOGIST

Posted on October 12, 2023 by John Bailey

State of Affairs: Oct 12

The climate of respiratory health in the United States.

BY DR. KATELYN JETELINA (Reprinted with permission)

OCT 12, 2023

It’s heeeere. The official start of the respiratory season kicked off last week.

Here is your first State of Affairs for this fall/winter.

Influenza-like illnesses

Every Friday, the CDC updates their “influenza-like illness” (ILI) data. This is a database where providers tally patients who presented with ILI—a fever, a cough, and/or sore throat—at their office. So these numbers include everything (flu, RSV, COVID-19, etc.) and are a general indication of the climate of respiratory health in the United States.

ILI is starting to creep up but is still below the “epidemic” level threshold. Last year we were hit early and hard. It will be incredibly interesting to see how this unfolds.

Low levels result in a pretty “green” picture of low activity across the United States. We will get to purple here in the next few weeks/months.

Here is a deeper dive into the “big three” viruses.

Covid-19: On the decline

After our summer wave, every Covid-19 metric is declining—wastewater, ED visits, and hospitalizations. This isn’t a surprise; we’ve consistently seen a lull in Covid-19 this time of year. We are exactly overlapping last year’s trends in wastewater.

SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater over time. Source Biobot.

Compared to the other big two (RSV and flu), Covid-19 hospitalizations continue to take the lead per capita.

Hospitalizations per 100,000 over time (Source CDC; Annotated by KKJ)

However, there has been significant decoupling of hospitalization and case numbers due to population-level immunity. Although we continue to see waves of infection, COVID-19-associated hospitalizations remained consistently lower than in previous years. Progress.

Covid-19 hospitalizations per 100,000, United States (CDC)

Who is being hospitalized today? According to a new CDC report:

2 in 3 are adults over the age of 65 years
90% of those hospitalized had multiple comorbidities
3 in 4 hospitalized are not up-to-date on Covid-19 vaccine*

We are paying close attention to how Omicron continues to change. Below is a beautiful Sankey diagram showing the Omicron family tree. From left to right, it shows the 14 generations of Omicron over time, with the thickness of the line proportional to the number of sequences.

Two specific subvariants will likely drive our expected winter surge:

BA.2.86—the highly mutated variant we detected a few weeks ago—is sticking around. It’s now in 24 countries and showing a 30-45% growth advantage. This means it’s not fizzling out; it still has the potential for a wave but not a tsunami. It has already started to mutate, so it will be important to see what incremental changes it makes to increase its capability against our immunity.
FLiP mutations—a group of subvariants that have a combination of new mutations called FLip because they involve two L to F amino acid mutations—is gaining ground.

Flu: Very low levels

Influenza levels are still very low. Last week, 1,040 patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza were admitted to a hospital. This is compared to a typical peak of ~28,000.

Interestingly, one specific strain of flu—called Yamagata influenza B—has gone extinct due to Covid-19 measures. This is incredible news because of two things:

It wasn’t thought that we could eliminate a flu strain.
This strain was notoriously difficult to predict for flu vaccine strain-selection purposes. The WHO has officially recommended not including this strain in future vaccines.

RSV: Heating up in the South

RSV is picking up. National trends are being driven by one region—the South. This typically signals the beginning of RSV season, in which the virus will subsequently spread to the Northeast and West over the next two months.

Excess mortality

After hitting a summer low, excess mortality (red line below) is once again above pre-pandemic normals (double black line).

Vaccination

How we fare in the upcoming season is strongly driven by vaccination uptake. The big question this year is whether Covid-19 coverage will match that of flu.

This is where we are right now:

Covid-19: Tracking vaccination rates is tricky now that reporting is not mandated. Last week, the CDC estimated 2% of the eligible population (4 million) have had their fall vaccine thus far. This is on par with last fall’s uptake.
RSV: We don’t know about uptake.
Flu: This data isn’t updated until the end of October. In previous years, ~20% of the population had their flu shot by now.

Bottom line

Things are quiet right now, especially with Covid-19 on the decline. This will change in the weeks to come. Be sure to get your vaccinations before Halloween—a safe goal to hit before things heat up. And once that ILI line hits epidemic levels, I strongly recommend putting that mask back on to avoid all types of viruses.

Love, YLE

*this originally said 1 in 4, which was a mistake. 1 in 4 ARE up to date on their vaccine.

“Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE)” is written by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH Ph.D.—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom. During the day, she is a senior scientific consultant to several organizations. At night she writes this newsletter. Her main goal is to “translate” the ever-evolving public health world so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support this effort, subscribe below:

BayDog

4 hrs ago

I’d like to give a huge shout out to Costco, who now has the Novavax vaccine in stock in many of their pharmacies across the country. When I called their pharmacy yesterday, a live person answered their phone, and was happy to book a Novavax appointment for me even though I’m not a Costco member. I get jabbed this afternoon.

Compare this to the multiple phone calls I’ve made to Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens where customers get stuck in an “automated customer service maze from hell” and often can’t speak to a real person. The few times I was lucky enough to reach the pharmacist, they either had never heard of Novavax, confused it with Moderna, and had no idea whether their company would be receiving it. And www.vaccines.gov is not up to date – the place to get real-time info, unfortunately, remains Twitter, or X, or whatever it’s now called, where there’s currently a #Novavax frenzy.

I have heard (although this isn’t confirmed) that Rite Aid and CVS will eventually get Novavax, but it could take a week or two. Perhaps it’s Costco’s superior internal distribution system that allows it to distribute fresh salmon to stores across the nation that enables it to be first at distributing Novavax.

After this exceedingly pleasant experience, I am planning to reinstate my Costco membership (even though I still have a huge box of unused, tissue-thin toilet paper in the garage from the early days of lockdown).

Also, Novavax plans to release the results of their Hummingbird (kids) study on October 17.

LIKE (16)

WESTCHESTER NEW COVID CASES DOWN 2ND WEEK IN ROW. WHITE PLAINS HOSPITAL FINDS 89% , 69 OF 77 ADMITTED TO BEDS LAST WEEK, HAD COVID

Posted on October 11, 2023 by John Bailey

SPREAD COUNTYWIDE IS BEHIND LAST OCTOBER 887 to 1463

WPCNR CORONAVIRUS SURVEILLANCE. Data from NY State Covid Tracker. Observation & Analysis by John F. Bailey.October 11, 2023:

Editor’s Note: The 3-day lag of the NY Department of Health in reporting covid cases continues disrupt daily ebbs and flows of the covid cases in but nevertheless the lag is all WPCNR can use to monitor how effective the people of Westchester are in lowering the disease effect on the county.

Westchester held Covid down for the second straight week, through October 1-7, reporting 887 new persons coming down with covid, down from 1,081 the previous week.

Sunday through Saturday last week, the number of new covid cases were, 109 Sunday, 220, Monday, 175 Tuesday,126 Wednesday, tapering off at the close of the week to 124 Thursday, 96 Friday and 37 Saturday. Westchester averaged 125 cases a day positive covid PCR test positives were 610 compared to 277 Antigen Test positives, lab-tested antigen positives accounting for 45% of the positives.

This shows in my opinion that persons coming down with symptoms are going to confirm positive tests, indicating that the disease is still active and dangerous. Completion of vaccinations and acquisition of booster shots perhaps will prevent more covid in the future.

At White Plains Hospital last week, admissions from last week from October 2 to 6 were 77 admitted to White Plains hoapital beds and 69 were found after admission to have covid or 89%. That is the highest percentage since last January. The hospital has been averaging 50 to 60% of new admissions to beds also testing positive for covid.

In comparison to October 22 hospitalizations for the same week Oct 3 to 7, there were 116 admissions to beds, with 86 found testing positive with covid. This is a lower rate of covid cases entering the White Plains Hospital beds this month but still approaching the hospitalizations for covid of October a year ago which had more admissions but a lower covid percentage (74%). We do not know how serious the covid cases were or are, mild,symptomatic, or deserving treatment.

But 89% is very high for White Plains Hospital last week. It means either people are not testing before they go in for a procedure which you are supposed to do. Since the positives are found by the hospital, this can only mean they wanted the procedure they were going in for and did not want to monitor their covid condition. I take this to mean the “back to normal mindset” of not taking covid precautions is infecting more of the population.

Compared to last October, Westchester population has in the first were as of October 2023, 887 new cases. The first week of October 2022, Westchester had 1,483, 40% lower cases. Our ability to lower covid is better.

Last week, Westchester averaged 13.5 new cases per 100,000 people. 13.5 times 10,04, (1,004,000 county population) is 135 new infections a day times 7 is 945 a week, x 4 weeks is 3,780 infections for October at our present rate of cases per day.

In October 2022, there were 4,563 infections. Westchester is infecting 17% LESS. This is good, if the schools do not spread the covid virus, and we have way of knowing what the schools new cases are across the county, because the Stated Edcucation Department no longer requires them to report covid cases. I think that decision does not make sense.

Last year 2021-2022, there were 138,183 students in Westchester Public Schools. If 2% of them test positive for covid and the schools do not catch you may have 2,763 students spreading covid in the schools. If 5% test positive you may experience a 7,000 student population spreading a faster spreading series of variants faster — especially if the school age population is not fully vaccinated (another thing not required by the State Education Department).

The danger of not reporting covid positives, the unfathomable decision not to test students daily, require social distancing adds to the possibility of the school lack of covid awareness having even higher spreads.

I felt the protocols of last year played a large part in getting covid numbers down by May of this year, but since then the numbers have gone for 10 of 12 weeks since July.