Author: ECCYC

New Jersey on Friday reported 4,145 COVID-19 confirmed positive tests and 14 deaths as federal officials continue to recommend people where masks indoors in 11 of the state’s 21 counties due to “high” transmission rates.

The state’s seven-day average for confirmed cases was 3,725 on Friday, down 7% from a week ago and up 88% from a month ago.

The statewide rate of transmission for Friday was 1.08. When the transmission rate is over 1, that means each new case is leading to at least one additional case and the outbreak is expanding.

There were 865 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases reported at 70 of the state’s 71 hospitals as of Thursday night. One hospital did not report data. Hospitalizations still remain significantly lower than when they peaked at 6,089 on Jan. 10 during the Omicron wave.

There were at least 172 people discharged in the 24-hour period ending Thursday, according to state data. Of those hospitalized, 106 were in intensive care and 43 were on ventilators.

The positivity rate for tests conducted on Sunday, the most recent day with available data, was 18.87%.

The state on Friday also reported 1,149 probable cases from rapid antigen testing at medical sites.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now lists 11 New Jersey counties with “high” transmission rates — Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Gloucester, Mercer, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Salem and Sussex. Those in high-risk areas are recommended to wear a mask indoors in public and on public transportation and stay up-to-date on vaccinations, according to the CDC.

Ten counties are in the medium risk category: Bergen, Cumberland, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Passaic, Somerset, Union and Warren. Masks are not recommended in the medium and low regions.

TOTAL NUMBERS

New Jersey has reported 2,043,979 total confirmed COVID-19 cases out of more than 17.7 million PCR tests conducted in the more than two years since the state reported its first known case March 4, 2020.

The Garden State has also recorded 337,194 positive antigen or rapid tests, which are considered probable cases. And there are numerous cases that have likely never been counted, including at-home positive tests that are not included in the state’s numbers.

The state of 9.2 million residents has reported 33,678 COVID-19 deaths — 30,615 confirmed fatalities and 3,063 probable.

New Jersey has the seventh-most coronavirus deaths per capita in the U.S. — behind Mississippi, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia — as of the latest data reported May 17. Last summer, the state still had the most deaths per capita in the country.

The latest numbers follow a major study that revealed even a mild case of COVID-19 can significantly affect the brain. Long COVID — the term commonly used to describe symptoms stemming from the virus long after a person no longer tests positive — has been found to affect between 10% and 30% of those who contract the infection, regardless of whether they have a mild or serious case.

VACCINATION NUMBERS

More than 6.91 million of the 8.46 million eligible people who live, work or study in New Jersey have received the initial course of vaccinations and more than 7.8 million have received a first dose since vaccinations began here on Dec. 15, 2020.

More than 3.79 million people in the state eligible for boosters have received one. That number may rise after the FDA on Tuesday approved booster shots for healthy children between the ages of 5 and 11. U.S. regulators authorized the booster for kids hoping an extra vaccine dose will enhance their protection as infections once again creep upward.

SCHOOL AND LONG-TERM CARE NUMBERS

For the week ending May 15, with about 56.4% of schools reporting data, another 11,135 COVID-19 cases were reported among staff (3,008) and students (8,127) across New Jersey’s schools.

Since the start of the academic year, there have been 125,550 students and 37,197 school staff members who have contracted COVID-19 in New Jersey, 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.

New Jersey has reported 876 total in-school outbreaks, including 6,234 cases among students and staff. That includes 69 new outbreaks in the latest weekly report ending May 23. The state reported 82 in-school outbreaks the previous week.

At least 9,113 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 343 facilities, resulting in 3,751 current cases among residents and 3,489 cases among staff, as of the latest data.

GLOBAL NUMBERS

As of Friday, there have been more than 527 million COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University, and more than 6.28 million people died due to the virus.

The U.S. has reported the most cases (more than 83.8 million) and deaths (at least 1,004,156) of any nation.

There have been more than 11.48 billion vaccine doses administered globally.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the local news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Deion Johnson may be reached at djohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DeionRJohhnson

JACKSON — A solicitor contracted by Verizon for door-to-door sales stabbed a man to death during a confrontation in the street early Thursday evening.

Michael Tsamas, 32, of the Laurence Harbor section of Old Bridge, knocked on the door of Joseph Delgardio’s home on West Veterans Highway near Conor Road in Jackson around 6:15 p.m. Delgardio told Tsamas he was not interested and Tsamas left the property, according to Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer.

A short time later Delgardio, 44, confronted the solicitor in the street and began to fight. Tsamas pulled a knife from his pocket and fatally stabbed the resident in the neck, according to Billhimer.

Billhimer did not disclose what led to the confrontation between Delgardio and Tsamas.

Tsamas was taken into custody without incident and charged with first-degree murder, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon. He is being held at the Ocean County Jail pending a detention hearing.

Dan Alexander is a reporter for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach him at dan.alexander@townsquaremedia.com

Click here to contact an editor about feedback or a correction for this story.

Two Howell Township men have to pencil in a day in court after being arrested at a motor vehicle stop in Ocean Township this week where they were found with Heroin among other drugs and paraphernalia.

Ocean Township Police said an officer pulled over the vehicle on Wednesday night along Route 18 near Deal Road around 9:30 after seeing several motor vehicle violations being committed by the driver.

The officer asked the driver and passenger out of the vehicle and when 54-year-old Donald Simcsuk did, several decks of heroin and a glass crack pipe fell out and to the ground.

Simcsuk and 54-year-old Rocco Bousanti were then detained and later arrested after police found additional drug paraphernalia.

Bousanti was also found in possession of a prescription narcotic without a valid prescription and all together was charged with Possession of Heroin, Possession of Buprenorphine Hydrochloride and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia.

Simcsuk was charged with Possession of Heroin and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and was issued several motor vehicle summonses as well.

Here are New Jersey’s Most Wanted Criminals

New Jersey’s most disgraceful child predators and accused predators

10 Most Endangered Historic Places in NJ

If you need gas before heading down the shore, fill up before you get on the Garden State Parkway or New Jersey Turnpike.

Average gas prices have stabilized, and dropped a bit in New Jersey, to an average of $4.75 per gallon for regular, according to AAA, but you will pay much more than that on the state’s toll roads.

The service stations on the Turnpike and Parkway can only adjust their prices up to three times per week. The price is based on a survey of prices at stations elsewhere in New Jersey.

As of Friday, the Sunoco stations on the toll roads are charging almost $4.88 per gallon for regular, more than a dime more than what you would pay if you filled up before you paid the toll.

That is also more than the highest average price in every New Jersey county as surveyed by AAA.

The good news is that Monmouth, Ocean and Atlantic Counties are showing some of the lowest average prices in the state as we head into the Memorial Day weekend, averaging between $4.71 and $4.76 per gallon for regular.

Cape may County has among the highest average price, at $4.80.

You will also tend to pay more along the Route 1 corridor.

Somerset County has the highest average price for gas, at $4.84.

The high cost of gasoline does not seem to be deterring travel for the long weekend, with AAA predicting more than 850,000 motorists will travel between now and Monday.

Eric Scott is the senior political director and anchor for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach him at eric.scott@townsquaremedia.com

Click here to contact an editor about feedback or a correction for this story.

See the Must-Drive Roads in Every State

---

Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

Air pollution has decreased in the U.S. over the past decade — but not everyone is breathing easier. 

People of color, regardless of income, are exposed to higher levels of air pollution than the U.S. population as a whole. And children living in neighborhoods where thousands of trucks rumble through on a daily basis face twice the risk of developing asthma from pollution exposure compared to kids in a different part of town. 

Kim Gaddy, a fourth generation Newark resident, is painfully familiar with asthma. She recalls rushing her one-year-old daughter to the hospital, coughing and gasping for air. Gaddy, then working in city politics with an ambition to become Newark’s first female mayor, already had one asthmatic child.

“I thought, I have got to do something,” says Gaddy. “No parent should have to see their child gasping for air like that. You’re helpless.” 

Since that day more than twenty years ago, Gaddy has been fighting for environmental justice in Newark. In 2015, she founded South Ward Environmental Alliance, a group representing four neighborhoods near Newark airport and the Port of Newark, two of the busiest transportation centers in the country. 

Trucks, trucks, trucks

Six major highways cross through the South Ward, creating a basket-weave of overpasses and on- and off-ramps. Trains chug by on two rail lines. People on their way to Newark airport drive by overhead, never seeing the neighborhoods below where thousands of people live near a waste transfer station, metal and paper recycling facilities, truck repair shops and factories. New Jersey’s largest incinerator lies just north of here. Warehouses are springing up on street after street. 

“We’re surrounded,” says Gaddy, 58, pointing out each facility on a tour of the neighborhood. “Recycling. Warehouses. Homes. Industry. Homes.” 

And everywhere, there are trucks. Semis, flatbeds, tanks, 18-wheelers, dumps, car carriers, waste haulers, box trucks, you name it.  

Many of these trucks run in and out of the port and the airport. But others serve industrial facilities and businesses in the neighborhood, many located just a block away from homes, a senior center, schools and the Olmsted-designed Weequahic Park, where children and adults play.  

In April, SWEA organizer Asada Rashidi, 21, helped gather local residents and high school students for a neighborhood truck count. Armed with clipboards, counters, air pollution monitors and masks to reduce exposure to vehicle exhaust, the citizen scientists counted 5,000 trucks in three hours. 

The unequal burden of pollution

Diesel trucks and buses make up less than 10% of vehicles on U.S. roads, but they’re responsible for more than half of the harmful tailpipe pollution from all road vehicles.

While the causes of asthma are multifold, recent research has pinpointed traffic pollution as one of these underlying causes, not just a trigger of flare-ups. This pollution can be concentrated in neighborhoods stocked with facilities that draw truck traffic — like warehouses, ports and industrial sites. 

Places like Newark’s South Ward. 

Gaddy and her children all have asthma. In 2004, asthma killed Gaddy’s brother-in-law Greg Westry, who collapsed on his Newark porch trying to catch his breath. Rashidi, a Newark native, has two brothers with asthma. In 2016 and 2019, two children from the same Newark school died of asthma attacks.

While one in ten kids across Essex County, New Jersey, have asthma, in Newark, the rate is one in four, says Dr. Khalil Savary, a pediatric pulmonologist at Rutgers University and Beth Israel Hospital in Newark. 

“When you have a high concentration of people who have lower socioeconomic status,  suboptimal housing, who were born prematurely, whose parents have asthma, and then you surround them in this net of traffic — I-95, 78, 280, 80, the airport, the port, the rail lines — that’s how you get this dynamic of respiratory illness in Newark,” says Savary. 

Asthma is a leading cause of missed school days and absenteeism in Newark. “When kids miss school, parents miss work,” Savary says. “They don’t get promoted. They’re more likely to get terminated. I see this regularly.”  

A countrywide blight

On the other side of the country, Environmental Defense Fund research in the Bay Area has shown that kids in urban neighborhoods with heavy truck traffic can face twice the pollution-related asthma risk compared to less-trafficked neighborhoods in the same city. 

Maria Harris, an epidemiologist with EDF, has worked with partners to map similar patterns of inequality in Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. 

In the New York metro region, air pollution is estimated to contribute to more than 21,000 children developing asthma each year. Across the region, around 20% of all childhood asthma cases are attributable to air pollution — but in the neighborhoods with the most traffic-related pollution, including parts of Newark, it can be up to 30%.

“In cities across the country, we see that air pollution and asthma impacts are not evenly distributed,” says Harris. “Pollution hotspots are having a dramatic effect on kids’ health.” 

Cleaner air, stronger lungs

Community leaders like Gaddy and Savary educate families and school staff on ways to reduce children’s exposure to asthma triggers like dust, mold and chemicals in school and at home. 

They’re also making progress cleaning up trucks. In 2021, New Jersey became the first eastern state to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Truck rule, which requires manufacturers to increase the number of clean trucks they sell in the state, reducing both air pollution and climate pollution. 

Gaddy calls the move a good first step, with one important caveat: “Communities like mine with asthma and health issues need zero-emission vehicles first.” 

New Jersey is one of 17 states that are working together to accelerate the deployment of clean trucks and buses. EDF’s Marilynn Marsh-Robinson is advocating for a targeted clean truck rollout that will reduce the burden of pollution in communities like the South Ward. 

“We could not do this work without partners like Kim who organize residents, perform truck counts and provide a deeper understanding of community impacts,” says Marsh-Robinson. “They are often excluded from economic development and policy discussions, even though their wisdom and lived experiences are essential to developing effective solutions.”

The EPA needs to do more

New research commissioned by EDF shows that eliminating pollution from about two-thirds of the trucks and buses on the road — including delivery vans, garbage trucks and box trucks — would result in 1,500 fewer premature deaths, 1,400 fewer hospital visits, and 890,000 less respiratory flare-ups and lost or restricted work days each year. 

This year, the EPA has proposed strengthening pollution standards for these vehicles for the first time in 20 years. But the proposal doesn’t go far enough, says EDF senior counsel Peter Zalzal, who is urging the EPA to strengthen its proposal and lay the groundwork to make all heavy-duty trucks zero-emission by 2035.

The final rule will be issued at the end of the year. In the meantime, SWEA, EDF and others continue to advocate for state, city, and company policies that put more zero-emission vehicles on the road now, prioritizing communities near ports, warehouses and other high-traffic areas. 

“I would like to see a collaboration between business and communities centering on the health of communities,” says Gaddy. “If you protect health before profits, that’s a paradigm shift. We can’t change history, but we can create a healthier future.”

Air pollution has decreased in the U.S. over the past decade — but not everyone is breathing easier. 

People of color, regardless of income, are exposed to higher levels of air pollution than the U.S. population as a whole. And children living in neighborhoods where thousands of trucks rumble through on a daily basis face twice the risk of developing asthma from pollution exposure compared to kids in a different part of town. 

Kim Gaddy, a fourth generation Newark resident, is painfully familiar with asthma. She recalls rushing her one-year-old daughter to the hospital, coughing and gasping for air. Gaddy, then working in city politics with an ambition to become Newark’s first female mayor, already had one asthmatic child.

“I thought, I have got to do something,” says Gaddy. “No parent should have to see their child gasping for air like that. You’re helpless.” 

Since that day more than twenty years ago, Gaddy has been fighting for environmental justice in Newark. In 2015, she founded South Ward Environmental Alliance, a group representing four neighborhoods near Newark airport and the Port of Newark, two of the busiest transportation centers in the country. 

Trucks, trucks, trucks

Six major highways cross through the South Ward, creating a basket-weave of overpasses and on- and off-ramps. Trains chug by on two rail lines. People on their way to Newark airport drive by overhead, never seeing the neighborhoods below where thousands of people live near a waste transfer station, metal and paper recycling facilities, truck repair shops and factories. New Jersey’s largest incinerator lies just north of here. Warehouses are springing up on street after street. 

“We’re surrounded,” says Gaddy, 58, pointing out each facility on a tour of the neighborhood. “Recycling. Warehouses. Homes. Industry. Homes.” 

And everywhere, there are trucks. Semis, flatbeds, tanks, 18-wheelers, dumps, car carriers, waste haulers, box trucks, you name it.  

Many of these trucks run in and out of the port and the airport. But others serve industrial facilities and businesses in the neighborhood, many located just a block away from homes, a senior center, schools and the Olmsted-designed Weequahic Park, where children and adults play.  

In April, SWEA organizer Asada Rashidi, 21, helped gather local residents and high school students for a neighborhood truck count. Armed with clipboards, counters, air pollution monitors and masks to reduce exposure to vehicle exhaust, the citizen scientists counted 5,000 trucks in three hours. 

The unequal burden of pollution

Diesel trucks and buses make up less than 10% of vehicles on U.S. roads, but they’re responsible for more than half of the harmful tailpipe pollution from all road vehicles.

While the causes of asthma are multifold, recent research has pinpointed traffic pollution as one of these underlying causes, not just a trigger of flare-ups. This pollution can be concentrated in neighborhoods stocked with facilities that draw truck traffic — like warehouses, ports and industrial sites. 

Places like Newark’s South Ward. 

Gaddy and her children all have asthma. In 2004, asthma killed Gaddy’s brother-in-law Greg Westry, who collapsed on his Newark porch trying to catch his breath. Rashidi, a Newark native, has two brothers with asthma. In 2016 and 2019, two children from the same Newark school died of asthma attacks.

While one in ten kids across Essex County, New Jersey, have asthma, in Newark, the rate is one in four, says Dr. Khalil Savary, a pediatric pulmonologist at Rutgers University and Beth Israel Hospital in Newark. 

“When you have a high concentration of people who have lower socioeconomic status,  suboptimal housing, who were born prematurely, whose parents have asthma, and then you surround them in this net of traffic — I-95, 78, 280, 80, the airport, the port, the rail lines — that’s how you get this dynamic of respiratory illness in Newark,” says Savary. 

Asthma is a leading cause of missed school days and absenteeism in Newark. “When kids miss school, parents miss work,” Savary says. “They don’t get promoted. They’re more likely to get terminated. I see this regularly.”  

A countrywide blight

On the other side of the country, Environmental Defense Fund research in the Bay Area has shown that kids in urban neighborhoods with heavy truck traffic can face twice the pollution-related asthma risk compared to less-trafficked neighborhoods in the same city. 

Maria Harris, an epidemiologist with EDF, has worked with partners to map similar patterns of inequality in Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. 

In the New York metro region, air pollution is estimated to contribute to more than 21,000 children developing asthma each year. Across the region, around 20% of all childhood asthma cases are attributable to air pollution — but in the neighborhoods with the most traffic-related pollution, including parts of Newark, it can be up to 30%.

“In cities across the country, we see that air pollution and asthma impacts are not evenly distributed,” says Harris. “Pollution hotspots are having a dramatic effect on kids’ health.” 

Cleaner air, stronger lungs

Community leaders like Gaddy and Savary educate families and school staff on ways to reduce children’s exposure to asthma triggers like dust, mold and chemicals in school and at home. 

They’re also making progress cleaning up trucks. In 2021, New Jersey became the first eastern state to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Truck rule, which requires manufacturers to increase the number of clean trucks they sell in the state, reducing both air pollution and climate pollution. 

Gaddy calls the move a good first step, with one important caveat: “Communities like mine with asthma and health issues need zero-emission vehicles first.” 

New Jersey is one of 17 states that are working together to accelerate the deployment of clean trucks and buses. EDF’s Marilynn Marsh-Robinson is advocating for a targeted clean truck rollout that will reduce the burden of pollution in communities like the South Ward. 

“We could not do this work without partners like Kim who organize residents, perform truck counts and provide a deeper understanding of community impacts,” says Marsh-Robinson. “They are often excluded from economic development and policy discussions, even though their wisdom and lived experiences are essential to developing effective solutions.”

The EPA needs to do more

New research commissioned by EDF shows that eliminating pollution from about two-thirds of the trucks and buses on the road — including delivery vans, garbage trucks and box trucks — would result in 1,500 fewer premature deaths, 1,400 fewer hospital visits, and 890,000 less respiratory flare-ups and lost or restricted work days each year. 

This year, the EPA has proposed strengthening pollution standards for these vehicles for the first time in 20 years. But the proposal doesn’t go far enough, says EDF senior counsel Peter Zalzal, who is urging the EPA to strengthen its proposal and lay the groundwork to make all heavy-duty trucks zero-emission by 2035.

The final rule will be issued at the end of the year. In the meantime, SWEA, EDF and others continue to advocate for state, city, and company policies that put more zero-emission vehicles on the road now, prioritizing communities near ports, warehouses and other high-traffic areas. 

“I would like to see a collaboration between business and communities centering on the health of communities,” says Gaddy. “If you protect health before profits, that’s a paradigm shift. We can’t change history, but we can create a healthier future.”

Picture this: you have a fresh iced mocha latte in your hand as you walk the streets of the Jersey Shore. 

Oh! Wait….hold up. That dress on that outdoor display is gorgeous! Let’s stop and take a look. 

Love it! Now that we are done shopping, let’s stop for a glass of wine and a quick appetizer. 

Imagine if this could be our reality up and down the Jersey Shore. Maybe it can be…

Let me explain:

You know that Broadwalk Pedestrian-Only Plaza in Red Bank?

If not, here is a little refresher: According to RedBankPulse.com, it is being described as, “a sprawling pedestrian plaza that mimicked the style and allure of many European old cities.”

It’s kind of cool.

There are little shops, restaurants with accompanying outdoor tables and the entire area is blocked off from traffic. It is like Red Bank created their own boardwalk despite their location.

Right now, the town of Red Bank is in the process of deciding on whether or not to bring this outdoor-friendly attraction back for the Summer of 2022.

Right now, it is looking pretty good but nothing is 100% just yet.

But then I asked myself: “Why isn’t this being done in more Jersey Shore towns?” 

Even without COVID-19 being a factor, there are a lot of towns that do not get the benefits of having its own boardwalk or beaches.

Not to mention, these pedestrian plazas would be an awesome opportunity to show some support to the local businesses in each individual city.

And depending on the town, each plaza could be individualized so they each become known as their own attraction!

I could so see other New Jerseyans taking a day trip for cool experiences like this.

I am not saying that these areas would ever be able to replace the beauty of a shore town with a boardwalk.

BUT, it could be a great way for various towns to help pull in additional revenue  and could make the Jersey Shore that much more iconic of a destination.

I put together a list of some Jersey Shore towns that I think would benefit and I am kind of curious if you agree.

Plus, if there is a town that you think should be included on this list, email me at Nicole.Murray@townsquaremedia.

I’m telling you. This could be the next big thing.

So without further ado:

I will keep you posted on Red Bank’s Broadwalk because as of now, an “unofficial approval” is all I have heard.

But keep your fingers, eyes, ears, toes, legs and arms crossed until I tell you to do otherwise.

I thank you.

*Curtsy*

While we are at it, have you ever heard of these tiny New Jersey towns?

A Broadwalk could help these little guys as well, don’t you think:

Have You Even Heard of the 30 Tiniest Towns in[carbongallery id=

New Jersey?”]

The 25 Most Dangerous Cities in New Jersey