Author: ECCYC

As schools across the southern half of New Jersey announced closures on Monday due to the first winter storm of the season, others opted not to reopen following the holiday break citing the surge of the omicron variant of COVID-19.

Red Bank Borough Public Schools said in a message posted to the district website that “the high volume of reported COVID-19 related issues” prompted the use of an emergency closure day, and that another might be used, or schools could pivot to either remote learning or a “minimum” school day with “grab and go” meals offered, if the situation warranted.

NJ.com reported that several dozen school districts dotting the Garden State had already told families they would not be reopening school buildings to begin 2022.

In another NJ.com article, the New Jersey Education Association said schools needed to look “carefully and honestly” at whether staying open was the right thing to do. The teachers’ union said it supports districts that are going remote at this time.

Gov. Phil Murphy, whose wife Tammy received a positive COVID result from a rapid test over the weekend, has so far left the decision on whether or not to keep schools open up to the individual districts.

But cases were rising sharply in New Jersey schools before the holidays, and with hospitalizations now at their highest level statewide since early May 2020, in the opening weeks of the pandemic, there is growing evidence that children are increasingly among those needing treatment outside the home.

Gov. Murphy’s regularly scheduled COVID briefing will be held virtually at 1 p.m. Monday.

On Thursday, the New Jersey Department of Health, citing “very high” COVID activity levels in at least three state regions, recommended that participation in school extracurricular activities be limited to students and staff with up-to-date vaccinations. What counts as up-to-date for each age group is based on recommendations from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Among the most recent suggestions on that list are use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children as young as age 5, booster doses for adults whose primary series was completed either two (for Johnson & Johnson) or six (Pfizer or Moderna) months prior, and a preference for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to be used over the Johnson & Johnson one-dose shot.

NJDOH also recommended that all students and staff participating in extracurriculars, regardless of vaccination stats, be tested twice weekly for COVID.

Patrick Lavery is New Jersey 101.5’s afternoon news anchor. Follow him on Twitter @plavery1015 or email patrick.lavery@townsquaremedia.com.

Michelle: Governor Murphy, when you’re ready.

Governor Phil Murphy: Thanks, Michelle. Good afternoon, everybody, and happy New Year. Starting the year 2022 with the woman who needs no introduction, the Commissioner of the Department of Health, Judy Persichilli. Her colleague, another familiar face, the Communicable Disease Service Director at the Department of Health, Dr. Ed Lifshitz, and a who needs no introduction, the Superintendent of the State Police, Colonel Pat Callahan.

Speaking of Pat, he’ll give us a weather update. We’ve been at it on the weather front intensely since before yesterday but really since yesterday. State of emergency in a handful of counties. The state’s Emergency Operations Center under Pat’s leadership was activated at midnight. Just to be safe rather than sorry, state workforce came in late today at 10 a.m. I’ve been back and forth with Mayors Paul Hodson of Egg Harbor Township comes to mind, Lenny Desiderio, Sea Isle City, Albert Kelly in Bridgeton, Gary Quinn County Commissioner Director in Ocean County, Danny Levinson, County Exec in Atlantic County among others. This is a little bit – I’m in central Jersey in Monmouth County. A tiny, tiny bit of snow here, but they are getting clobbered in the south. Could be as much as double-digit inches when this thing is said and done, so if you’re down there, stay strong.

We expect little activity in central and northern Jersey. That’s not to say we won’t have anything, but it won’t be remotely what we’re seeing in the south. Ready.nj.gov, if you don’t have to be out, don’t go out. If you lose your power because there are high winds, don’t assume someone else is calling it in. You should call it in. If you see a downed line, don’t go near it. Call that in as well. Probably Pat will get into this in more detail. Expecting some coastal flooding as well as a part of this, so a storm that’s significant and it’s principally a south Jersey storm, but everybody out there be careful and keep your eyes peeled.

I want to thank everybody who has reached out both to the First Lady and to me to get to the First Lady over the past 24 hours with well wishes since her positive test yesterday. She continues to be asymptomatic and in good spirits and God willing will remain so, but certainly this occurrence necessitated that we move today’s briefing to its virtual format. I have tested negative. I tested today negative, yesterday negative, a handful of days ago – I think three negatives in six days. We’ll both continue to test regularly, and we’ll closely continue to adhere to all CDC guidelines during this time. A couple of lessons pop out from Tammy’s experience, which I’ll come to at the end of my remarks. With that, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

First of all, again, happy New Year. On Saturday, January 1st, I formally notified leadership in the senate and assembly respectively to extend for an additional 90 days our administration’s emergency powers related to vaccine distribution and administration, testing, and ensuring adherence to CDC guidance, particularly as it relates to masking in vulnerable settings, including our schools and childcare centers where we know there are large numbers of unvaccinated individuals. I also requested a 90-day extension for a number of administrative orders, directives, and waivers that have been issued by our departments and agencies in response to the pandemic. This request is, by the way, in accordance with the law I signed last June that allowed for the formal declaration of a public health emergency to expire while ensuring that our administration had the necessary authority to continue to fight the pandemic. I’m grateful for the attentiveness and partnership of senate president Steve Sweeney, assembly speaker Craig Coughlin to this request, and we will continue to work closely with them and with their leadership teams.

This Omicron tsunami has changed the game yet again. We cannot summarily give up the fight. We need to remain on a war footing to ensure that we can get resources to where they need to be and when they need to be there, and yes, this means that we anticipate our kids having to wear masks in their schools for now in order to protect their health and safety and ensure that they can continue in-person learning. This brings us absolutely no joy. No one wants to see our kids’ smiles more than I do, but this is what is necessary now to keep our schools safe, and I’ll have more on those efforts in a few minutes. With the exponential surge in our numbers, it would be the height of irresponsibility to lift these basic public health requirements at this time, and I and we will not let that happen.

Let’s now jump to those numbers and start with a look at what is happening in our hospitals. As it has been throughout the pandemic, ensuring the ability of our healthcare system to serve those who are the sickest is among our very highest priorities. Over the past week as you can see, we have seen amore than 50% increase in the number of individuals hospitalized for COVID-19 along with significant increases in both ICU and ventilator counts. That’s one half of this equation, albeit, as I said, the half that we’re watching the most closely. The last thing we can allow is for our hospitals to be overrun. The other half, of course, is the staggering numbers of new cases that are being reported every day as you can see here. Today the Department of Health is reporting 22,625 new cases in total, but we know that this is a dramatic undercount as most cases – or as most people, rather, testing positive through at-home test kits are not reporting their test results to local health authorities, so look at this number as a floor.

Here is what we need everyone to really take to heart, the need to mask up, to get boosted, and to just practice common sense. Yes, the data shows us that illnesses due to Omicron do not lead to hospitalization at the rates that we had seen with prior variants and most directly when compared against Delta, but – and this is a very big but – when we are seeing case counts as high as we are and knowing the real number is much higher, whatever solace we get from a lower hospitalization rate frankly goes out the window. The sheer numbers of new cases are directly leading to hospitalization figures we have not seen in well over a year. Here again are today’s hospitalization numbers compared to one year ago today, and on the far-right side in red compared to the worst day of last winter’s surge. We have more people in the hospital today than at any point in the past year and the most since early May of the year 2020.

Then let’s compare the case numbers from today – again, we know this is an undercount – against one year ago and then from the height of last winter’s surge. The numbers we’re seeing today blow anything we have seen since the start of the pandemic out of the water, and yes, folks are still dying. Here is the latest numbers of confirmed deaths over the past week. Again, these are confirmed. This does not include the losses of life in our hospitals. By way of example, yesterday our hospitals reported 16 yet to be confirmed losses of life. You can see the total numbers are bearing down on 30,000 blessed souls lost from our state. Our message is simple: take Omicron seriously, wear your masks, get your booster, don’t take a cavalier attitude, and go get tested. The symptoms between a cold and Omicron may not be much, but there is a world of different between the two.

There are more than 1,000 testing sites open across the state. We are ware that many have long lines or few open appointments, and to be sure, this is an issue in literally every American state at this moment, frankly probably in every country around the world. We continue to work to expand accessibility with our partners at the local, county, and federal levels. I will be on with the White House tomorrow morning by example. To find the testing sites nearest to you, go to that website, covid19.nj.gov, and click the link for testing at the top of the page.

As for boosters, we are continuing to see more and more people getting boosted, which is a good thing, but with only little more than 45% of those eligible having gotten their booster, this number is not going up as fast as we either want or need it. There are more than 1900 locations across New Jersey administering vaccines, and again, we have made it easy. Go to covid19.nj.gov and click the link for vaccine info to look for the clinics nearest to where you live or work. The fact is that right now if you are six months out from your primary vaccination course of Pfizer or Moderna or two months out from J&J, you are no longer fully protected. The efficacy wanes over time, and you are vulnerable to Omicron or even Delta because that has not entirely left the building either. We see this in the slowly increasing number of new infections reported in individuals who had completed their primary vaccination courses.

Over the week of December 13th through December 19th – as you can see – and this is before the Omicron tsunami really began, more than one quarter of new infections were among those who had completed their primary vaccination courses. Thank God – one death is too many, but only one loss of life over the statewide total of 136. Anecdotally from the daily reports we’re getting from our hospitals, roughly 70% of those showing up for treatment in a hospital are unvaccinated or not completely vaccinated. These folks continue to be the primary driver of the number of hospitalizations, intensive care unit beds, and sadly, deaths. As Dr. Ed and his team at the Communicable Disease Service parse through that data, we’ll get a more complete picture in the coming weeks’ breakthrough reports as to how many of these hospitalizations among vaccinated folks are for a COVID illness, especially whether they have received a booster, as opposed to hospitalizations for another reason and that they test positive for the virus anyway. This is the snapshot that we have. Thankfully, though, we continue to see a remaining protection against hospitalization and death in these individuals as the numbers show. Here are the complete numbers of breakthrough cases dating back as we do every time we gather to January 19, 2021.

Now I know one area that a lot of people have concern with is our schools – we understand that completely – many of which returned today for in-person learning, and yes, we know that these schools are also going to be dealing with a lot of absences of both students and staff who have contracted Omicron during the tidal wave of new infections. Even before our schools let out for the holiday break, the infection rate, as you can see, among both students and staff in general was increasing. These are overall rates, and these are total cases regardless of where the exposure occurred. We’re not distinguishing in this case between in-school transmission or from other location, and by the way, let’s also acknowledge the last column is for a partial week for most districts, but – and, again, this is a big but – the numbers of outbreaks directly traced to in-school activities have remained below where we would have anticipated given the speed and upward trajectory of Omicron.

This speaks directly to the importance of the layered approach to student and educator and staff safety that we have had in place in our schools since they opened in August and September, especially to the importance of proper masking. Keep in mind, while each one of these cases we take with deadly seriousness, in the state, we have more than 1.4 million students and over 3,500 different school buildings. Let me be clear. We currently have no intention or plan to shut our schools. We have no desire to return to remote learning, which is suboptimal as we all know in terms of learning, instruction, and learning loss. Certainly, individual schools and districts may make their own decisions after consulting their own local health departments, and some are starting the second half of the school year in remote fashion, but we will do everything we can to keep our kids in schools where not only we know they will have a more appropriate educational experience but where the data actually shows they can be kept in an overall reality safe.

To ensure that we can keep our schools open, Judy’s team at the Department of Health distributed guidance to all district and school leaders on additional steps to take when in regions of very high COVID activity on the CALI score. The Department also issued guidance over the weekend regarding the Test to Stay option for keeping people – keeping students, rather, in their classes. I’ll let Judy go into greater detail but here is the broad view. Test to Stay pulls together contact tracing and testing to allow an asymptomatic student who was determined to be a close contact of another student who has tested positive to remain in school if they test negative. Any student who is remaining in class through Test to Stay must comply with both testing and masking requirements and should follow all CDC guidance for keeping away from others when not in school. Test to Stay is an additional level of protection to keep our schools open and our kids learning in their classrooms, but the bottom line remains that nothing is as vital as vaccination and, especially for teens who’ve been eligible for a while, boosters.

Let me sum all this up. Do not take Omicron lightly. Our hospitals are seeing numbers they haven’t seen in more than a year and a half. We’re seeing new case counts that dwarf what we were seeing even in the earliest days. The fight is not over, but we can shorten it if we all take this seriously. Mask up, get boosted, and again, take this seriously.

Before I move on, I want to come back to Tammy’s circumstance. We, by the way, as a family had just tested literally a couple of days before. We heard that somebody in our inner orbit in New Jersey – a non-family member came to us on Saturday afternoon came to us and said they had each tested positive. We then arranged for tests on Monday morning. Tammy came up – by the way, no symptoms – came up positive. She took another test this morning and came up positive again. I came up negative yesterday and today, and I had come up negative a few days before had all the other members of the family, so there were two takeaways for us. Number one, this thing is crazy transmissible because Tammy had done and continues to do all the right things. Not just masking, double masking, social distance, double vax, boosted, the whole shooting works. That’s one lesson.

Don’t underestimate how easily you can get infected from this thing, but the other lesson is I sit here – and please God this continues to be the case – she had no clue that she had it. She had zero symptoms. She still has zero symptoms. To me, that’s the bigger headline. If you do the right thing, you’re double vaccinated, you’re boosted, you do everything according to the guidance that we know works, you may get it because it’s so crazy transmissible, but again, please God this is borne out with her situation, but as of now it is, you don’t get sick enough to be miserable or worse yet go to the hospital or worse yet get really sick or maybe even God forbid die. Get vaccinated, folks. Get boosted. That’s the best, smartest thing you can do. As I mentioned before, we reported another with the heaviest of hearts 12 COVID-related deaths today that are confirmed. Let’s take a couple of minutes to remember some of those we’ve lost.

Let’s start with this man, Dennis Mikula, Sr. He had called North Caldwell home for 21 years, and he passed on December 14th last month. A stand-out football player at Clifton High, Dennis was president and owner at Mikula Contracting Inc., which his father had founded and which Dennis had elevated to being named and I quote New Jersey Family Business of the Year of the year 2020 by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Rothman Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He also supported Clifton’s youth football and baseball programs. He left behind his wife Cynthia – I’ll come back to her in a minute – and his sons Dennis, Jr. and Ryan, and I had the great honor of speaking with Dennis last Thursday. He also left Dennis’s wife Diana and three grandchildren, Lucy, Ryan, and Jeremy. As we speak, Cynthia is currently fighting her own battle in the hospital against COVID. Please, please, please keep her in your prayers. He is also survived by his brother Andrew among other extended family. We are grateful to Dennis for a lifetime spent in service to his community, and may God bless and watch over him. At the urging of his son Dennis, Jr., please get vaccinated and continue to follow guidelines to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, and keep that Cynthia in your prayers.

Today we also remember Joseph and Charles Scuilla of Hasbrouck Heights. We lost them both in the pandemic’s early days. They were father and son. Joseph on the right, Charles on the left. They were 101 and 71 years old, respectively, when we lost them. Joseph was a proud army veteran and found a career in accounting after his service days concluded. Charles worked as a manager for the Bergen Record newspaper. They passed within a month of each other. Joseph’s wife Madeleine with him on the right, and that’s Charles’s mom, passed away last September. She had COVID early on, but she did not die from COVID. I’ll come back to that in a moment, and you can’t make this up. Today would’ve been Joseph and Madeleine’s 80th wedding anniversary, January 3rd. Unbelievable.

Charles left his wife Cathy on the left – I’ll come back to Cathy in a moment – his children, their children, Michele and Michael, and I had the great honor of speaking with Michael last Thursday. Also, Joseph’s – they were Joseph’s grandchildren as well as the next generation, Alyssa, Jenna, Drew, Connor. In the early days of this awful pandemic, back when these folks passed in April and May of 2020, Cathy had – on the left, had a double knee replacement. Her husband, father-in-law, mother-in-law were all in the hospital at the same time. Can you imagine? Michael reminded me of something which was poignant. All three of the losses of lives, none of them ever knew that the other had passed just by the way it worked out, and sadly, his grandmother had pretty severe dementia at the end, so the combination of timing, the severity of the illness, and his grandmother passing in the way she passed, they never knew that the other ones had passed, which is probably the way it should’ve been. They are also survived by daughter and sister Joanne, Joseph’s other grandchildren and nieces Lynne and Lori, and their collective kids Christina, Melissa, and Michael. God bless all of them. We pray for them, and keep them in your prayers.

Finally for today, let’s give a quick shoutout to Warren based Spinelli Financial Advisors, another of the small businesses that has partnered with the Department of Labor through the Return & Earn program to get our state back working. Founder, this guy, Mark George Spinelli recognized a need to hire another employee for his growing firm. Through Return & Earn, he was able to not only find that new team member but also offset the costs of their onboarding and training, and that new employee received a cash bonus as well as the opportunity to work toward a professional certification and a fulfilling new career. That’s exactly how Return & Earn is supposed to work. We are grateful to George for being an early adopter. He and I spoke last Thursday. Check them out on the website, by the way, spinfa.com, SPIN, F as in Frank, A as in apple, .com.

That’s what I’ve got for this Monday. Again, we urge everyone to take the steps necessary to protect themselves and their families during this Omicron tsunami. Get boosted. Wear a mask. Use common sense. Get tested and stay home if you feel ill. With the winter weather today, please take it easy on the roads, particularly in the south, and let the plows and spreaders do their jobs. The state of emergency declared for the counties of Ocean, Burlington, Atlantic, Cumberland, and Cape May remains in effect, but wherever you are, let’s all stay safe. With that, please help me welcome the woman who needs no introduction, the Commissioner of the Department of Health, Judy Persichilli.

Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli: Thank you, Governor, and good afternoon, everyone. The simultaneous spread of the Delta and highly transmissible Omicron variants as well as increased holiday travel and indoor gatherings have caused a tsunami of infections in the state. We are reporting record high COVID cases and test positivity rates. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations for COVID-like illness are also increasing for adults and children. The COVID activity level is very high in the northern and central regions of the state, and the southern part of the state is reporting hospital census higher than our peak in April of 2020.

Also, we are seeing the highest number of pediatric hospitalizations that we have seen either with a principal diagnosis or admitted for another illness and testing positive for COVID. As of today, 102 children are hospitalized. 76 of those children are confirmed COVID and 26 are persons under investigation. That number has literally doubled over the last seven days. The demand for COVID testing has skyrocketed, and emergency departments are experiencing high volumes of individuals seeking non-emergency COVID-19 testing. The emergency rooms are not COVID-19 testing sites. Please go to the website covid19.nj.gov to find one of the thousand testing sites available around the state.

Hospitals and long-term care facilities throughout the state are experiencing large staff shortages due to COVID. As a result, the Department and the state Office of Emergency Management are working with FEMA on requests for federal strike teams to support hospitals and with the New Jersey National Guard for strike teams for our long-term care facilities. We are getting many inquiries also about setting up field medical stations as we did in April of 2020. Our experience and lessons learned from the first surge taught us that expanding capacity off the site of hospitals actually strained the clinical staff, so we will keep the staff close to the hospitals by adding capacity in and around our existing hospital campuses allowing us to manage the volume of patients more effectively and efficiently with the goal of assuring that all patients get the care they require.

We must do everything we can to reduce the spread of this unrelenting virus and protect those returning to work and school. Our greatest tools remain vaccination and testing. To ensure that access to testing is widely available for students, teachers, and staff returning to the classroom, the Department took a series of additional steps last week. We asked all school testing vendors to be in as many schools as possible today and to be able to test staff and students. I’ve sent letters to local health departments, the FQHCs and testing site partners asking them to prioritize appointments and walk-in availability for children and their families this week. Sites were also asked to expand hours dedicated to testing children. I also held a call Thursday with the pharmacy retail chains asking them also to prioritize testing of children, and as Governor Murphy mentioned, on Friday, we visited a new federal testing site that can test 1,000 individuals a day at 90 Halstead Street in East Orange.

The state has also partnered with Vault Health to offer free at-home saliva tests. To order a test that can be shipped to your home, visit learn.vaulthealth.com/nj. As of today, 463,457 residents have ordered test kits. However, due to a nationwide inventory constraints of test kits overall, Vault has capped the number of daily requests for New Jersey to 30,000 per day. If you try to request a kit and get a message stating that the cap has been reached for that day, please try again the next morning.

We welcome the news that the United States Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, has authorized a Pfizer booster dose for children between the ages of 12 and 15. Additionally, everyone who received a Pfizer primary series is now eligible for a booster at five months rather than six. In New Jersey, more than 256,000 12- to 15-year-olds have received their primary series. Starting next Monday, January 10th, over 155,000 of them, or 61%, will be eligible for booster doses. We are awaiting similar approvals for the Moderna booster vaccine as well. Also, based on FDA action, today children between the ages of 5 and 11 who have received a solid organ transplant or are considered moderately or severely immuno-compromised are eligible for an additional dose of Pfizer 28 days after they have completed their initial series.

We know that the unvaccinated remain most at risk of severe illness or death from Omicron, so please get vaccinated if you haven’t done so. If you have gotten the primary vaccine series at least five months ago, please get a booster shot as soon as possible. Only 45% of eligible New Jerseyans have received a booster.We must do better. We encourage everyone to wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, stay home if you’re sick, and get tested. As Governor Murphy mentioned, the Department has issued guidance regarding the Test to Stay option for keeping students in their classes. Test to Stay allows asymptomatic, unvaccinated students who were exposed to a person with COVID-19 in any school setting where students are supervised by school staff indoors, outdoors, or on school buses to continue in-person academic activities that are part of the regular school curriculum and provided during school hours. Students participating in Test to Stay are required to comply with enhanced testing and masking recommendations and should quarantine when not in school. If schools are considering implementing Test to Stay policies, they should have robust contact tracing in place and access to testing resources.

They should also obtain advanced consent for testing of the students. Schools must report individual test results to local public health officials and to the individual who provided consent. This Test to Stay option does not apply to exposures that occur outside of school and in the community. We’ve also released new guidance for timelines for quarantine and isolation in exposed not-infected individuals. For unvaccinated individuals are those more than six months out from their second mRNA dose or more than two months after the J&J vaccine and not yet boosted. Five days of quarantine and an additional five days of strict mask use is required. In very limited circumstances when a five-day quarantine is not feasible, it is imperative that an exposed person wear a well-fitting mask at all times when around others for the ten days after exposure. This guidance does not apply to the schools. CDC will be releasing quarantine and isolation guidance for K through 12. The current guidance should be followed while we await CDC’s new guidance.

Boosted individuals are those who have completed the primary series of an mRNA vaccine within the last six months or the J&J vaccine within the last two months, there is no need to quarantine following an exposure, but you should wear a mask for the ten days after the exposure. The best practice would also be to include a viral test for SARS, CoV-2 at day five after exposure. If the test is positive for COVID-19, the individual should isolate for the five days from the date of the positive test result. If symptoms occur, the individual should immediately isolate and get tested for COVID-19.

If you are infected, the time frames are, regardless of vaccination status, ten days total. Isolate for five days. If asymptomatic or symptoms are resolving after five days, you can end your isolation. However, you must wear a mask around others for an additional five days.

Moving on to my daily report, as the Governor shared, our hospitals reported a high of 4,715 hospitalizations of COVID-19 positive patients and persons under investigation. We are reporting three new cases of multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children since our last briefing. There are 155 cumulative cases in the state, and one of these children is currently hospitalized. At the state veterans’ homes since the last briefing, there have been nine new cases among residents and three COVID-related deaths at the Paramus home, 22 new cases among Menlo Park residents, and 1 new case among Vineland home residents. At our state psychiatric hospitals, there are 75 new cases among patients; 28 at Greystone, 27 at Ancora, 9 at Trenton, and 11 at Ann Klein. The percent positivity in the state as of December 30^th is 32.2%. The northern part of the state reports 33.33%; the central part of the state, 32.15%; and the southern part of the state, 28.22%. That concludes my daily report. Please continue to stay safe. This virus is unrelenting. It searches and finds vulnerable individuals, and that includes individuals who are not vaccinated or are not boosted, so let’s get vaccinated and boosted to protect ourselves, our family, our friends, and most importantly, our children. Thank you.

Governor Phil Murphy: Judy, thank you for all. You mentioned this. You and Pat and I were together Friday in East Orange at the opening of a mega testing site. I want to thank President Biden and the federal team for standing that up. I was asked on Friday whether or not we’d be open to more, and the answer has got to be yes. Pat, I’m sure, will back that up as well. I think particularly if we can get one in the southern part of the state.

Secondly, we had a good call with the regional hospital coordinators and then separately with the long-term care association leadership. You’ve really gone through a lot of the challenges that are being faced in each of those venues and God bless our veterans; let’s just say that, as we should every time we gather. Pat, we’d love in particular for you to, if you could, comment on two things. One is the weather and where it is and where you see it going. I mentioned earlier, and I know you know this, but the south has been getting clobbered this morning with snow.

Secondly, Judy, something you and Pat and I were discussing earlier, and Pat, you may want to throw a little color on this. People ask us a lot about hospitalization capacity, and back in the spring/summer of 2020, one of the weapons was a separate field medical station unto itself. That model is probably not going to be the model we’re going to be pursuing this time around for the simple reason that staffing is a huge challenge. Well, remember in the spring of 2020, we had a lot of people volunteering, healthcare workers from Florida and other places, nurses, doctors, even in some cases from outside of the country, to come into New Jersey and New York City at the time and be the bullpen, basically. Those days are over. We’re all getting clobbered. There’s nobody coming in that’s not already in here. Potentially, National Guard support, which is one area we are hoping that FEMA can help us out perhaps beyond that. I say that because any more color, Pat, you can add to the notion that Judy and you and I were discussing. The model this year, as long as this surge lasts, is going to be on campus, trying to find ways to get another 50 or 100 beds into an existing campus or perhaps to set a tent up on campus at that particular hospital as opposed to some unto itself field medical station. Any comments you’ve got on any of the above? Again, Judy, thank you for your comments and leadership. Pat, over to you.

State Police Superintendent Col. Pat Callahan: Thank you, Governor. I will start with the weather. As predicted by the National Weather Service, the southern part is getting clobbered, as you would say, Governor, over six inches so far. The National Weather Service just came out with predictions of 12 to 18 inches expected in southern parts of the state. I also know that Atlantic County and Cape May County coastal communities are under coastal flooding advisory. To that end, US 40, both eastbound and westbound, are closed right now and traffic is being detoured because of the flooding down there. Upwards of a foot above ground level is expected. That advisory will go into early Tuesday morning. I did have a call with all the county OEM coordinators and state partners yesterday. We activated the SEOC last night, as you said, Governor, at midnight, and our urban search and rescue staff remain ready with high water vehicles as well as snowmobiles.

As of about noon today, troopers had handled about 114 accidents and 185 [inaudible 39:07]. President Fiordaliso let me know that Atlantic ACP was dealing with about 2200 outages, which is now I think under 1,000, so that’s trending in a good direction, but we may see that increase given the high winds and the expected snow, again upwards of another possibly 10 to 12 inches of snow down there. I do recommend that anybody should stay home if you can. If you have to go out, 511nj.org is a good place to go before heading out. I also stress to our citizens with disabilities or access and functional needs to go to registerready.nj.gov, which is a phenomenal resource to let us first responders and emergency managers know where you are and what your needs may be during a disaster.

With regards to the COVID response, Governor, certainly that East Orange site is phenomenal and as you said, if we had our druthers, we’d have one down in southern part of the state as well. That hospital capacity expansion, based upon what we’re seeing in reality as well as modeling, leaves us to believe that a lot of hospitals are going to be asking for that. Again, that point, to your point, about building those out in the existing footprint is key because of the nature of where we are with staffing as a state and as a nation. We are still pushing for those 10 strike teams of 15 members each, which would be able to literally go and do those rounds. We hope that that 150-person request that we put through through FEMA and HHS will review and hopefully come to an approval on that because we can set up all the beds we want. If we don’t have the medical staff to go out there and take care of patients, it’s really going to be all for naught. That is almost an hourly conversation between Judy’s team and certainly our All Hazards Incident Management Team, and whether that’s beds, the equipment to support it – I think we had upwards of 2,000 beds last year from both the mothballed hospitals that we renovated as well as the field medical stations and that we’re in the process of just making sure that we’re ready to go. Our urban search and rescue folks, along with EMS task force, are – it’s our primary concern, Governor, as you well know.

Continue to monitor the storm on the weather front and continue to monitor the COVID storm as well, Governor.

Governor Phil Murphy: Yeah, redefining multitasking here on Monday, January 3^rd. Thank you for all of the above. A variation on my comments and your very good color on densifying bed capacity on campuses is the fact that – and you made the point and Judy’s made it as well. Staffing is likely going to be our biggest constraint here. Folks need to get their mind around that as opposed to – we’ll continue, obviously, to show you the bed counts and the ICU counts and the ventilator counts. Obviously all that’s important, but we cannot say enough things positive about the heroism but also fatigue and level of infection and illness right now among healthcare workers, not just in New Jersey, around the country.

Judy, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Before we take a couple questions, the modeling, which I know you’re constantly updating – I’m – wouldn’t call this a silver lining, but the modeling – this thing comes to a head based on the models here within the next week or two. Is that fair to say? I know you’re going to update that, but that’s the time frame that we’re looking at right now?

Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli: Yeah, we’re looking at our peak, Governor, around the 14^th. That might move up a little bit because we’re exceeding what the model shows, so we’re updating the model today. Then we take our model, we compare it to the University of Pennsylvania CHIBE model, and we’re looking at the peak between 6,000 and it could be as high as 9,000 hospitalizations. Hopefully the trajectory goes up as fast – it comes down as fast as it goes up.

Governor Phil Murphy: Yeah, which it’s done in places like South Africa and the UK, so God willing that happens to us. Those are big numbers, folks. The peak reached in April of 2020, just to remind folks, 8,270 total beds. Again, the good news is we’re a ways from that at 4,715, but we’re going up a little bit by leaps and bounds every day, overwhelmingly unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated folks. Thank you for that.

Michelle, let’s take a few questions. I know there’s a lot of balls in the air, so we’re not going to be on here forever, but let’s take a few. By the way, unless you hear otherwise, we’re going to be together a week from today. We obviously wanted to be in person today, but that was not to be, but we’ll be together unless you hear otherwise a week from today at the War Memorial at 1 o’clock in our normal venue. We will be revisiting venue frequency, other means of communication in this intense period, as you can imagine. We’ll be – health providing if I continue to test negative, I’ll be out there around the state in one form or another I hope beginning tomorrow.

With that, Michelle.

Q&A Session

Michelle: Okay, we’re going to start with Matt Arco.

Governor Phil Murphy: Hey, Matt.

Matt Arco, NJ.com: Good afternoon, Governor. Vault Health said it can’t release positivity results for the free at-home tests because of its contract with the state. Why is that and what is the positivity for those tests? Also, why can’t people find out what variant they have for a positive Vault test? They said they don’t give that out. Also, we spoke on – you were speaking a lot about this today, but again, obviously hospitalizations have increased dramatically since the last time I asked you whether you were considering bringing back a ban on all elective surgeries. Given where we are now with the dramatic increase and even on regular divert status, there are four hospitals that are on full divert; six are on emergency divert. How close are you to banning elective surgeries, and what – if you’re still not there yet, what is that benchmark?

Governor Phil Murphy: Got it, all good questions. I’ll let Judy and maybe Ed will come in from the bullpen on the question of what variant. Judy, I’m assuming that the rate of positivity – if you’re doing an at-home Vault test, you’re probably not doing it for the fun of it. You’re probably doing it because you’ve got some level of concern, and your level of positivity is at least what the state’s level is, which is right now in the low 30%, but I’ll let you comment on that. Also, Ed, in terms of the variant and why or why not they may be not disclosing that.

On elective surgeries, again, Judy, you should add color here. At the moment, we have no plans for that because hospitals are doing that on their own basis. There’s a level – and Judy can go through this. There’s a level of urgency. I think it’s one through five. You’ve already got a bunch of hospitals that are taking level four and level five procedures off the table and that is the – it is both what’s happening and what we think is the right mix. Obviously we reserve all options if we have to, but that – it is happening as we speak. With that, any comments on Vault, Judy, or electives and then Ed, any comments on variants and why or why not they may not be willing to disclose?

Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli: Yeah, on the first question about Vault positivity, we just make the assumption that it’s the same as the state. Over 400,000 tests have been requested but about 40 or 50,000 have been returned, so sample size right now is small. At the end of the day, the positivity of Vault only is just de minimis and in terms of what we’re seeing every day in terms of overall test positivity.

On elective procedures, elective surgeries, we have levels, as the Governor shared, one through five. Levels one and two are trauma and significant surgical emergencies that cannot be delayed. Levels three, four, and five are less severe or intensive. Level three requires a case-by-case evaluation on whether a delay would have subsequent deleterious effects on the individual and four and five are truly elective procedures that can safely without any consequence be delayed.

For hospitals that are in crisis, standards of care and/or on divert, they have already curtailed levels four and five. For hospitals that go on divert but it’s for periods of time as they perhaps clear out their emergency room so they can bring in other people, other individuals, temporary divert does not require them to curtail as long as they have capacity and staff within the hospitals. All of the hospitals are evaluating. They have pretty rigorous evaluation teams that look at this every day several times a day.

Governor Phil Murphy: Any color on variants and why or why not they may not be willing to disclose?

Department of Health Medical Advisor Dr. Ed Lifshitz: Sure, Vault like the vast majority of clinical laboratories out there are running a PCR test. They’re running a test to see whether you have the virus or not. They’re not running the sequencing testing on most or almost all the samples that have been provided to them. That’s why people aren’t routinely getting that result because that test isn’t routinely being run. As part of the state’s and the CDC’s overall surveillance systems, we do take a sub-sample of clinical labs and do sequencing on them. I don’t know specifically if or how many we take from Vault, but it would not be a test that would routinely be done every time you send in a PCR test to Vault or anywhere else, Labquest or Quest, Labcore or Quest wouldn’t give you those results either because they’re not being done.

Governor Phil Murphy: Thank you, Ed. Good to see you. Happy New Year. Michelle, what do you got?

Michelle: Alright, we will go to Ken Burns.

Governor Phil Murphy: Hey, Ken.

Ken Burns, WHYY: Happy New Year, Governor. How are you?

Governor Phil Murphy: Are you wearing my mask?

Ken Burns, WHYY: Yes, I am.

Governor Phil Murphy: Just checking.

Ken Burns, WHYY: One for you and one for the Commissioner. Starting with the Commissioner, you mentioned the staff shortages at hospitals. I was wondering if you could provide some color on how bad it is for New Jersey since you mentioned putting in a request for federal strike force to come in to help out with the medical capacity. To the Governor, this is more of a technical question as far as the administrative extension that you requested from the legislature. For those who are not familiar with it like you and I, could you describe what that would mean for the everyday New Jerseyan?

Governor Phil Murphy: Good questions. I’ll ask Parimal to come in after Judy on the second one, but I would just say this. The staffing challenges, to use a technical term, bad. It’s bad in both hospitals and long-term care. There’s just no other way around it. Judy can give you more specifics.

Frankly, Ken, I think the biggest most visible reality – again, it brings us zero joy – is masking in schools and childcare facilities for an extended period of time and I hope for not that long of an extended period of time. That, to me, is the most visible piece of this, but I’ll ask Parimal to come back in after Judy. Judy, how tough is it? How would you quantify the staffing challenge?

Department of Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli: The conversations that we’ve had with both long-term care and with our hospitals is to plan for and anticipate that 30%, at a minimum, of their employees may be out sick at any given time. That follows the positivity that we’re experiencing throughout the state. In planning for 30%, there’s three levels of staffing. There’s conventional staffing, which is your everyday staffing models. There’s contingency staffing where you stretch those models, maybe increase ratios a bit. You stretch the hours of operation of individuals, meaning they work more than a 8-hour shift; they may work 10 or 12 hours as we saw last April. Then there’s crisis standards where you totally change the way you take care of patients, making sure that all of the necessary and immediate needs are taking care of patients with the right skill mix. You develop teams of specialist that visit patients every day. They round every day. Rather than teams of people having 6 to 8 patients, they may have 15. The skill level is at the highest level to be able to take care of the most immediate needs appropriately.

All of the hospitals are aware of conventional, contingency, and crisis staffing, and all of them are planning for a 30% decrease in staff complement. They’re redeploying administrative individuals to help out on the front-facing, direct patient care activities. We have signed a waiver allowing our EMTs, a very valuable and extensive group of individuals, to be able to go into the vaccination sites and help with vaccination so that the clinical people that are manning those sites can go back into the hospitals and long-term care facilities. We’re trying to cover all bases for what we call crisis standards.

Governor Phil Murphy: Thank you, Judy, for that. Parimal, what else would the man on the street feel or see by the extension of these directives?

Chief Counsel Parimal Garg: Yeah, and I think the Commissioner just pointed out that the Department of Health has issued a whole  series of administrative orders, directives, and waivers to facilitate the government’s response to the pandemic. That’s everything from vaccinations to testing to resource allocation to data sharing. Much of that is done through either changing the rules and regulations that are in place or relaxing them to allow greater flexibility, particularly with regard to healthcare facilities and healthcare personnel.

Governor Phil Murphy: Well said. Good questions, Ken. Thank you all. Michelle, let’s do a couple more if we can.

Michelle: Great, next question will come from Joey Fox.

Governor Phil Murphy: Hey, Joey.

Joey Fox, New Jersey Globe: Good afternoon, Governor. I’ve got a few non-COVID questions here. I’ll try to talk as fast as I can. First, can you provide one last lame duck update on Rachel Wainer Apter as Supreme Court nomination, and do you have a timeline for the process to replace Justice Faustino Fernandez-Vina who’ll be term limited out pretty soon? Next, right before the holiday season, you endorsed Bob Menendez, Jr. for Congress. Do you see it at all problematic for the son of a powerful politician to be anointed as the front-runner for a seat? Do you support affirming or eliminating the party line system that allows politicians like Menendez, Jr. to become such dominant front-runners? Do you have any comment on redistricting commission tiebreaker John Wallace’s reasoning that he picked the Democratic congressional map this time around because their public Annapolis picks last time? Finally, do you agree with the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the conviction of Michelle Lodzinski? Thank you.

Governor Phil Murphy: Thank you, Joey. No update on either of the Supreme Court justices you asked about other than to say we’ve got – we’ve enjoyed and continue to enjoy very good partnership and deliberations with our legislative colleagues on these cases obviously in the Senate side of the house. Yeah, I’m confident that we’ll have a good result and no news to break on Justice Faustino. I happen to know Rob Menendez independent of his dad. I’m obviously a huge fan of his dad, but Rob I know of on his own merits, and I’m a huge fan. They are, indeed, father and son, but I know them each as their own person and as their own public service. Rob, I think in the early days in the port, has been an outstanding commissioner and I’ve known him well before that as well. I’m honored to have endorsed him and I think he will, assuming he is – he wins, he’s going to be an outstanding representative for our state and for that district.

No comment specifically on the map other than I’ve got unlimited regard for Justice Wallace. I think he was the right person to be in that seat, and I’m very gratified that Chief Justice Rabner put him in there. I think the commissioners each did an outstanding job. Obviously the six on our side of the aisle are the ones I know best. We shall see. I’m mostly – we don’t talk about this much, but I’m mostly gratified that New Jersey is growing, that people are moving here, not just because of the pandemic but that the census showed that and that we’re going to be in the happy position for the next ten years of retaining 12 representatives in the House of Representatives regardless of which side of the aisle they come from. That, to me, is the big news, and I hope that number goes up in the decades ahead.

I’ve got no comment on the case. I would not have any reason to other than God bless that little guy who we know sadly is – was taken from us many years ago. Thank you for that.

Michelle, let’s do one more if we can.

Michelle: Okay, then you’ll last question will come from Dan Munoz.

Governor Phil Murphy: Who is it, sorry? Daniel?

Michelle: Yeah, Dan Munoz.

Governor Phil Murphy: Hey, Daniel.

Daniel Munoz, NJBIZ: Hey, can you hear me?

Governor Phil Murphy: I can.

Daniel Munoz, NJBIZ: Hi, Governor. Hope you’re doing well all things considered.

Governor Phil Murphy: Same.

Daniel Munoz, NJBIZ: Yeah, thank you. I guess one off-topic, with the state bank that you proposed, where do you see that going in your second term, and is that something that you could see happening in these next four years? Do you think the pandemic and its recession have demonstrated the need for such an institution, or are there better alternatives? With many towns enacting mask mandates and many businesses and hospitals doing their own quasi-restrictions, do you think it’s going to fall to the state to do new restrictions, or is it going to be up to these individual entities or towns, counties, businesses, and hospitals? I guess what would we need to be seeing in terms of hospitalizations, intensive care utilization in order for you to declare that there is indeed a shortage and that something more needs to be done in terms of state restrictions? I guess given how the situation and COVID has deteriorated and just how the sheer anxiety and fear that New Jerseyans have had, do you think that vacation you took might not’ve been the best, time thing to be doing just given how the pandemic has worsened so much and how people – how scared and anxious people are right now? Thank you.

Governor Phil Murphy: Let me go through these in order. The state bank, I think some version of that is going to come to pass. We had a good meeting on that just before the Christmas holiday. There is an outline of a way forward, and I think you’re going to see real progress on that front. That’s been one of the harder ones for us to get done for a lot of legitimate reasons. It looked like it was easier from the outside to get into the office, and you realize some of this stuff isn’t as easy as you  had hoped. That’s on that list, and I do think the pandemic and the challenges that individuals, families, businesses, municipalities, particularly students with college loans – I think it has sharpened the need for this as opposed to lessened the needs for it.

Parimal will correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it was last June I signed an executive order that, indeed, explicitly allowed individual communities to take steps, as you are seeing in communities around the state, because we had a lot of folks legitimately asking us for that ability. Early on in the pandemic, we were worried about unintended consequences. That’s when we knew little. In other words, if restaurants were open on one side of the Hudson versus the other or in Essex County but not in Hudson County, or you had mandate here and not there, would you have a tilt and have unintended consequences and capacity issues, etc.? I just – that’s just something we’re just not as concerned about. Folks understand overwhelmingly the need to wear a mask. They understand that it’s not going to be the trigger in most cases whether I go to Restaurant A or Restaurant B or Hospital A or Hospital B. That’s the way we have wanted it. The fact that you’re seeing these mandates being put in place is something we had anticipated. We, in fact, I’d say more than anticipated; frankly, welcome because we thought this was the right – we make the decision based on the local reality.

I think you asked about on what basis would you see a need, any numbers or – listen, we leave all options on the table, but I do want to review a couple of numbers. We have – this one I went through earlier. We have 4,715 hospitalizations as of last night. The peak in April of 2020 was 8,270. We have in our ICU units 644 as of last night. The peak also in April of 2020 was 2,080, so you’re, in one respect, less than half of that capacity and the other, less than a third, just to put some perspective around this. Obviously you keep all options on the table. I frankly – this is echoing two exchanges we’ve had already in this call. Number one, you’re going to see much – number one, staffing is going to be probably the constraining factor here as opposed to hard beds or PPE or ventilators. Secondly, that’s going to inform a strategy that you heard us talk about a little while ago, which is densification on our hospital campuses to allow us – that’s one way, not the only way but one way for us to address the staffing challenges.

Listen, Daniel, given it’s been about 650 days of this pandemic, I’ve gone away for two eight-day periods, so that’s 16 days out of 650. Why? You got to, at some point, spend time with your family and reboot. Secondly, I’ve got the best lieutenant governor in America as my partner with great leadership around her and around me, including Judy, Pat, Ed, and many others. Invariably in today’s day and age, I’m in my home in Middletown but if I told you I was somewhere else, the fact of the matter is we run a state today overwhelmingly remotely on phones, on Zooms, and trust me, we’re never far from where we need to be. I promise you that. By the way, I would say that to everybody. The reward for spending time with your family is worth it. Do it responsibly, safely, you stay in touch. You get a lot back from that.

With that, I want to thank on behalf of Judy, Pat, Ed, Parimal, the rest of the team, including our outstanding sign language folks who’ve been with us from moment one at every single one of these press conferences, and they deserve a huge shout-out. Thank you, folks. Get vaccinated. Get boosted. Have your seat belt on for the next week or two. We will be together again in person unless you hear otherwise in Trenton a week from today at 1 o’clock. We will be, God willing, at health providing around the state for one reason or another over the course of the days between now and then. Obviously if we need to report to you, we will report back to you as and if and when we need to. Please stay safe. Do not underestimate for one second how transmissible this is. Ed would want me to say that. Judy would want me to say that. This thing is crazy transmissible, but if you’ve done the right thing – double-vaxxed, boosted, wear a mask, preferably double masks, keep social distance, you use your head when you’re indoors particularly, you wash your hands with soap and water – Judy would want me to say that. You do all the above, you may get it, but God willing overwhelmingly the evidence says you’re not going to a hospital or you’re not getting severely ill. Let’s hope it stays that way. God bless, everybody. Take care and stay safe.

The U.S. is expanding COVID-19 boosters as it confronts the omicron surge, with the Food and Drug Administration allowing extra Pfizer shots for children as young as 12.

Boosters already are recommended for everyone 16 and older, and federal regulators decided on Monday that they’re also warranted for 12- to 15-year-olds once enough time has passed since their last dose.

But the move, coming as classes restart after the holidays, isn’t the final step. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must decide whether to recommend boosters for younger teens. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, is expected to rule later this week.

The FDA also said everyone 12 and older eligible for a booster can get one as early as five months after their last dose rather than six months.

Vaccines still offer strong protection against serious illness from any type of COVID-19. But health authorities are urging everyone who’s eligible to get a booster dose for their best chance at avoiding milder breakthrough infections from the highly contagious omicron mutant.

Children tend to suffer less serious illness from COVID-19 than adults. But child hospitalizations are rising during the omicron wave — most of them unvaccinated.

The vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech is the only U.S. option for children of any age. About 13.5 million 12- to 17-year-olds — just over half that age group — have received two Pfizer shots, according to the CDC.

For families hoping to keep their children as protected as possible, the booster age limit raised questions.

The older teens, 16- and 17-year-olds, became eligible for boosters in early December. But original vaccinations opened for the younger teens, those 12 to 15, back in May. That means those first in line in the spring, potentially millions, are about as many months past their last dose as the slightly older teens.

As for even younger children, kid-size doses for 5- to 11-year-olds rolled out more recently, in November — and experts say healthy youngsters should be protected after their second dose for a while. But the FDA also said Monday that if children that young have severely weakened immune systems, they will be allowed a third dose 28 days after their second. That’s the same third-dose timing already recommended for immune-compromised teens and adults.

Pfizer is studying its vaccine, in even smaller doses, for children younger than 5.

New Jersey on Monday reported another 12 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 20,428 confirmed positive cases, while the number of hospitalized coronavirus patients across the state jumped above 4,700 in the wake of the winter holidays — marking an increase of 76% in only a week.

Gov. Phil Murphy addressed the state’s ongoing surge during his latest COVID-19 briefing, held virtually a day after his office announced his wife, First Lady Tammy Murphy, tested positive for the virus. Murphy said he has tested negative three times in the last six days.

The Democratic governor announced he’s asking the Democratic-controlled state Legislature for a 90-day extension of some of his remaining pandemic emergency powers set to expire next week on Jan. 11. That includes the authority to keep the statewide mask mandate in schools, as well as his administration’s oversight of vaccine and testing distribution.

”This omicron tsunami has changed the game yet again,” Murphy said as he hosted his first briefing in two weeks. “We cannot summarily give up the fight. We need to remain on a war footing to ensure that we can get resources to where they need to be, when they need to be there.”

Murphy stopped short of announcing or calling for any new statewide restrictions Monday, though he repeated that officials must “keep all options on the table.”

He also encouraged local governments to implement their own orders “based on the local reality.” Numerous municipalities have imposed new business and mask mandates and many school districts have switched to all-remote classes in recent weeks.

And Murphy said officials “currently have no intention or plan to shut our schools” and “no desire to return to remote learning” statewide.

“We will do everything we can to keep our kids in schools where not only we know they will have a more appropriate educational experience but where the data actually shows they can be kept in an overall reality safe,” he added.

• MORE: Gov. Murphy seeking extension of COVID emergency powers as cases, hospitalizations spike
• MORE: Kids in N.J. schools may have to continue to wear masks as Murphy seeks to extend mandate

The Garden State’s seven-day average for new confirmed positive tests increased to 23,391, up 91% from a week ago and 836% from a month ago. That’s the highest average New Jersey has seen in the 22-month-old pandemic.

The state has recorded six consecutive days of more than 20,000 confirmed positive tests.

Murphy stressed the surge in daily cases may not represent the full extent of the current outbreak because most people are testing positive through at-home test kits that are not reported to local health officials.

“So look at this number as a floor,” he said.

There were 4,715 patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases across New Jersey’s 71 hospitals of Sunday night. That’s the most since May 7, 2020, when the initial wave of the pandemic was starting to ease. Hospitalizations have more than quadrupled in the last month.

New Jersey is also seeing it’s highest number of pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations, with 102 children in hospital beds as of Monday, state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said. That number has doubled over the last week, Persichilli said.

Officials say hospitalizations are the more important metric to watch because only a portion of people who catch the virus develop severe cases. The goal, officials say, is to prevent hospitals from becoming overstressed and running out of space to care for patients.

Patient numbers haven’t climbed to the heights they did in the early days of the pandemic, when there were more than 8,000 people hospitalized in the spring of 2020. But increases in patients typically follow a week to 10 days after surges in case numbers.

“When we are seeing case counts as high as we are, and knowing the real number is much higher, whatever solace we get from a lower hospitalization rate goes out the window,” Murphy said. “The sheer numbers of new cases are directly leading to hospitalization figures we have not seen in well over a year.”

The statewide positivity rate for tests conducted on Thursday, the most recent day available, was 32.2% — meaning nearly 1 in 3 people who sought a test that day got a positive result. The positivity rate has been above 30% since Christmas Day. New Jersey has not had positivity rates hovering around 33% since April 2020.

The state has reported record highs in daily cases multiple times over the last two weeks. The latest record was 29,740 positive tests announced on Saturday. Previously, the state’s single-day record was 6,922 cases on Jan. 13, 2021, in the early days of vaccine rollout.

Officials said a combination of factors are contributing to the surge: people spending more time indoors because of colder weather, both the delta and omicron variants of the virus spreading across the globe, people traveling for the holidays, and more people getting tested before and after holiday gatherings.

The state does not issue daily breakdowns of the vaccine status of those who test positive, are hospitalized, or died because of the virus.

But Murphy said Monday unvaccinated residents “continue to be the primary driver of the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths,” accounting for roughly 70% of those being being hospitalized in New Jersey. Still, he added, infections among fully vaccinated people have been rising, accounting for more than a quarter of new infections over the week of Dec. 13-19.

During that week, the state reported 44,481 positive tests. Of those, 12,453 were from fully vaccinated people, and those cases led to 17 hospitalizations (out of 1,804 total) and 1 death (out of 136 total).

As of Dec. 19, New Jersey has reported a total of 91,896 breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated people, leading to 1,682 hospitalizations and 401 deaths, though those represent a small percentage of total cases.

Officials say vaccinated people are less likely to contract the virus and much less likely to develop life-threatening cases. But officials are calling on more people to get booster shots because the effectiveness of vaccination wanes over time.

Murphy said his wife’s positive test shows the omicron variant is “crazy transmissible” because she is fully vaccinated, boosted, and practices other precautions.

“Don’t underestimate how easily you can get infected from this thing,” the governor said.

But Murphy also noted his wife has no symptoms.

“If you do the right thing — if you’re double-vaccinated, you’re boosted, you do everything in accordance to the guidance we know works — you may get it because it’s so crazy transmissible. But, God willing, you don’t get sick enough to be miserable, or worse yet, go to the hospital, or worse yet, get really sick or maybe even die,” the governor added. “Get vaccinated, get boosted. That’s the best, smartest thing you can do.”

There are early signs that while the omicron variant is much more transmissible, it may cause less severe symptoms and require fewer hospitalizations than previous strains.

The state does not break down how many of the new cases are from the delta or omicron variants. But for a seven-day period ending Dec. 25, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated about 58.6% of all new cases nationwide were from the omicron variant. In New Jersey, omicron accounted for 8% of cases sampled Dec.-11, according to the most recent state data.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

There are caveats to the record explosion in cases. Officials note that testing was less widely available during the first months of the pandemic, making it difficult to compare periods.

Testing is now far more available, even though there have been long lines at testing sites in recent weeks. The state reported a record high 116,480 PCR tests conducted Dec. 27, in the wake of the Christmas holiday weekend. During the surge in cases last winter, the state had just two days — Dec. 20, 2020 and Jan. 11, 2021 — with more than 90,000 tests administered.

But it‘s undeniable New Jersey’s COVID-19 case and hospitalization numbers have been trending in the wrong direction over the last several weeks.

HOSPITALIZATIONS AND TRANSMISSION RATE

The 4,715 coronavirus patients hospitalized across New Jersey as of Sunday night marks 441 more patients than the night before. That’s despite 461 patients being discharged during the 24-hour period that ended at 10 p.m.

Of the people hospitalized, 644 were in intensive care (57 more than the previous night) and 284 were on ventilators (14 fewer than the previous night).

The state’s hospital numbers could peak between 6,000 and 9,000 patients around Jan. 14, Persichilli said Monday.

She also said the state has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send reinforcements for health-care workers in New Jersey who can’t work because they have tested positive.

“Staffing is likely going to be our biggest constraint here,” Murphy said.

New Jersey’s statewide transmission rate, which indicates whether the pandemic is growing or shrinking, dropped to 1.74 on Monday. It was 1.77 on Sunday and 1.92 on Saturday. If it reaches 2.0, it will indicate every infected person is passing the virus along to two people.

All of New Jersey’s 21 counties are listed as having “high” rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the CDC. The agency is recommending that all people in high transmission counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status.

VACCINATION NUMBERS

More than 6.4 million, or 74%, of the 8.6 million eligible people who live, work or study in New Jersey have been fully vaccinated and more than 7.3 million (or about 85%) have received a first dose since vaccines began here on Dec. 15, 2020.

More than 2.27 million, or 46% of the 4.95 million people in New Jersey eligible for boosters, have received one.

“This number is not going up as fast as we either want or need,” Murphy said.

Anyone 16 and older in the U.S. who has received their second dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines at least six months ago is eligible to get a booster shot. Anyone 16 and older who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is also eligible for a booster two months after their single shot. In most situations, the CDC said, it recommends the Pfizer and Moderna boosters.

TOTAL NUMBERS

New Jersey, an early coronavirus hotspot, has now reported 29,073 deaths — 26,218 confirmed deaths and 2,855 probable deaths — in the nearly 22 months since the pandemic began here. The probable deaths, which are revised weekly, increased Monday by six fatalities.

The state has the third-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S., behind Mississippi and Alabama.

New Jersey has reported 1,418,352 total confirmed cases out of more than 16.5 million PCR tests conducted since the state’s first case was announced on March 4, 2020. The state has also reported 226,486 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases.

SCHOOL AND NURSING HOME NUMBERS

Cases continue to rise among school staff and students in New Jersey, according to numbers released before schools went on winter break that track infections regardless of where the transmission occurred.

For the week ending Dec. 26, with just 28.8% of schools reporting data (down from 61%), another 7,125 confirmed cases were reported among staff (1,973) and students (5,152).

Since the start of the academic year, there have been 48,690 students and 12,008 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19, though the state has never had more than two-thirds of the school districts reporting data in any week.

The state provides total student and staff cases separately from those deemed to be in-school transmission, which is narrowly defined as three or more cases linked through contact tracing.

At least 8,772 of the state’s COVID-19 deaths have been among residents and staff members at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to state data. There were active outbreaks at 439 facilities, resulting in 3,189 current cases among residents and 5,842 cases among staff as of the latest data.

GLOBAL NUMBERS

As of Monday, there have been more than 290.5 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, with more than 5.4 million people having died due to the virus. The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 55.2 million) and deaths (more than 826,100) of any nation.

There have been more than 9.2 billion vaccine doses administered globally.

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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @johnsb01.

A look at some of the latest construction in Ocean County. This work is located along Route 9 near Elmhurst Blvd.

We continue to see residential construction continuing around Ocean County and it’s happening in Lakewood. This development has been under construction for a while and it continues to expand as more folks flock to Lakewood.

Listen to Shawn Michaels mornings on 92.7 WOBM and download our free 92.7 WOBM app

Lakewood is now Ocean County’s largest town with a population that has surpassed Toms River, Brick, and Jackson. The latest stats have Lakewood with a little over 135,000 residents according to the 2020 Census.

Toms River now has approximately 95,000 residents. Brick Township has a little under 74,000 residents, and Jackson with almost 59,000 residents. So it’s obvious the hot spot for a residential spike in Ocean County is Lakewood.

In fact Lakewood is the 5th largest town in all of New Jersey…Toms River by the way is number 8 in the Garden State. So two of the largest towns in New Jersey are right next to each other. Lakewood and Toms River are neighbors so no surprise it feels so busy in the northern end of Ocean County.

Is residential construction keeping pace in Lakewood? This construction project I visited is along Route 9 and gets pretty busy between the Lakewood and Toms River border.

How do you think we are fairing in the two largest towns in Ocean County when it comes to residential construction? Let us know what you think and post YOUR comments below.

By Ed Potosnak

Gov. Phil Murphy beat both historical trends and the prevailing national sentiment when he secured re-election earlier this month.

His successful campaign marks the first time in more than 40 years that a Democratic New Jersey governor has won a second term, and it came amid a red wave that overtook his Democratic counterpart in Virginia – and, closer to home, felled longtime state Senate President Steve Sweeney.

While the pundits and pollsters were predicting massive margins for the governor, New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, or LCV, aware of the national political mood, was always envisioning a close election and doubled down on this year’s election.

And our work helped secure the governor’s historic re-election and together with our allies made the difference between a win and a loss.

LCV is proud to be the largest non-union ideological spenders in elections, investing more than a quarter of a million dollars to power environmental champions at all levels of government — from Governor Murphy to mayors Steven Fulop of Jersey City and Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken — to victory. It marked our broadest set of endorsements ever and, in a testament to the environmental movement’s commitment to diversity, including a record number of women and people of color.

Our investments powered nearly 2.3 million voter contacts in all corners of the state, sending more than 75,000 pieces of mail and texting nearly 117,000 voters. New Jersey LCV’s digital ads were also viewed more than 2 million times.

At the same time, our campaign staff had an immensely positive story to tell on behalf of Governor Murphy and our legislative champions.

The governor, in his first term, was among the nation’s strongest environmental champions, making him America’s greenest governor in my opinion. He moved aggressively on expanding clean energy, doubled his commitment to offshore wind creating a nation-leading program, signed a landmark environmental justice bill and worked to remove lead water pipes from our state’s urban centers.

This pro-conservation track record was essential to motivate environmental voters and bring them to the polls in an off-year election amid a conservative backlash against President Biden.

In addition to voters re-electing the governor because of his strong pro-environment record and record commitments, we saw environmental champions be elected up and down the ballot, including in a critical state Senate election where Andrew Zwicker won a heated race to replace retiring Republican Senator Christopher Bateman, a long-time environmental advocate.

By contrast, many of those who lost in this month’s election, including Senate President Sweeney, took their eye off the ball, focusing more on political intrigue in Trenton than campaigning on an agenda that motivated democrats in his district base and including aggressive action on climate change leaving voters uninspired.

So what do the lessons of the 2021 elections mean going forward?

First, these election results were a clarion call for swift passage of President Biden’s landmark Build Back Better Act.

This nearly $2 trillion proposal would deliver on the promises the president made with the largest investment in addressing climate change, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, cutting child poverty and jumpstarting a 21st-century clean energy economy that creates millions of jobs.

New Jersey’s congressional delegation has played a critical role in shaping the Build Back Better Act. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Monmouth), for instance, has been a steadfast champion of clean energy as chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. Representative Andy Kim has been an outspoken champion for bold climate action to protect our kids’ future and to ensure that New Jerseyans can benefit from good-paying jobs as our economy grows greener.

Representative Tom Malinowski, a friend of the environmental movement who helped end the threat posed by the PennEast pipeline, has also been a leader in bringing the Build Back Better Act home by demonstrating to his colleagues and to the public how a “majority-making” representative of a moderate district can champion bold climate action.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Bergen) brokered a critical deal to bring Democratic moderates on board in the important recent vote. It is essential that the Senate follows through to ensure President Biden secures this victory and we can tackle the climate crisis.

Altogether, the progress on Build Back Better combined with the election results should embolden Governor Murphy and legislative leaders to dream big.

For the environment, this means moving our state’s clean energy goals in line with the president’s vision, investing in NJ Transit and addressing hazards like poor indoor air quality and water pollution.

We are at a historic moment in our state and nation’s history. Now is the time to build on the governor’s first term and pro-conservation vision to deliver real results for our environment and the people of New Jersey.

Ed Potosnak is the executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, a non-partisan organization.

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Cyberattacks may once have been thought of as a danger primarily in the corporate sector but school districts have not been immune.

The Educational Services Commission of New Jersey, which advocates for and provides services to students with various developmental disabilities, has been working with Dellicker Strategies on a “Cybersecurity Framework” to provide to its partner schools, colleges, and municipalities, to help them ward off the threat.

Vendors in the co-op are now being made available to districts that might feel their computer systems are not quite as secure as they’d like.

“A growing number of districts and other entities have expressed an interest in addressing their cybersecurity concerns,” Finkelstein said, adding that the problem is “critically important to address as soon as possible.”

‘Everyone needs to feel comfortable that their personal information … is secure’

While a school cyberattack might not carry the monetary consequences of a credit card breach or identity theft, databases could include both student and parent names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and the same for staff as well.

“Everyone needs to feel comfortable that their personal information, student or staff member, regardless of where one works, is secure,” Finkelstein said.

He also said in some cases, years’ worth of curricula written by educators have been wiped out by cyberattacks.

And the issue has come into even sharper focus given the electronic devices many students are now assigned by schools, plus the “digital divide” of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Finkelstein, ESCNJ’s framework is designed to cater to schools and districts that already have plans in place to tighten their defenses against these attacks — and those that don’t.

“The opportunity is there to have their existing plan reviewed to ascertain whether, in fact, it is in their best interests or whether they need to modify it,” he said.

‘The experts who deal with this … can be with them very quickly’

To start and implement a cybersecurity plan from scratch, Finkelstein said, is a three- to six-month process, which must be in place by June 30 to satisfy liability insurance renewals for the 2022-23 school year.

So, the clock is ticking.

Even for districts that have started the process, Finkelstein said the writing of procedures, training of staffers, and the actual updating of technology all takes time.

But he said he wants parents to know that ESCNJ is working hard on their behalf, not only to put those parents at ease, but also to save their children’s school districts some money.

“We really hope that they’ll take advantage of our co-op and contact the experts who deal with this, who can be with them very quickly,” Finkelstein said.

For more information, visit escnj.us.

Patrick Lavery is New Jersey 101.5’s afternoon news anchor. Follow him on Twitter @plavery1015 or email patrick.lavery@townsquaremedia.com.

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First Lady Tammy Murphy on Sunday joined “likely” break through cases confirmed during the omicron wave of COVID, as the continued pandemic prompted a third Walmart store in the state to temporarily close.

Murphy received a positive result on a rapid antigen test Sunday afternoon, according to the governor’s office, though she remained asymptomatic.

Gov. Phil Murphy and the rest of their immediate family had so far tested negative, and would continue to test regularly in the coming days.

The governor and first lady both are fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID, having received their most recent doses alongside three of their children in late November in Monmouth County.

The Murphys had taken rapid tests due to a “recent known, non-family contact in their home,” according to a written release, which did not give further information about when the known exposure had taken place.

The family had been out of state for the Christmas holiday, vacationing in Costa Rica until Thursday.

On Friday afternoon, the governor toured the federal COVID testing clinic in East Orange, which first opened to the public on Saturday.

As he is vaccinated and boosted, Murphy is not required to quarantine per CDC guidance, but he would continue to wear a mask in all public settings, the statement said.

Monday’s regularly scheduled state COVID-19 briefing would shift to a virtual format and stream online.

Required procedures for reporting, case investigation and contact tracing had been followed.

On Sunday, the state confirmed 24,710 new cases and 2,689 likely cases, based on PCR and rapid test results, respectively.

A day earlier, the state confirmed 28,635 new cases and 5,361 likely cases, based on test results for New Year’s Day.

There also were 4,280 COVID patients hospitalized as of Saturday, including 595 in intensive care units statewide. Hospital data has been running a day behind for the past several weeks at least, on the state COVID dashboard.

Another store temporarily closes

On Monday, the Walmart location in Manville at 100 North Main Street closed its doors to allow for a deep-cleaning of the store, a spokesperson said in a written statement.

That follows similar, temporary closures of Walmart stores in Linden and Kearny last week.

“Everything we’re doing is for the well-being of our associates and the thousands of customers we serve daily, and in consideration of guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and health experts,” the statement continued.

The store also would be following CDC guidance for indoor mask wearing, regardless of vaccination status, “in public indoor settings in counties with substantial or high transmission.”

That includes the entire state, based on CDC data, as of Sunday.

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