COVID cases, hospitalizations rise on Long Island

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising sharply on Long Island and statewide, but unlike the early years of the pandemic, few patients are ending up in intensive care or dying, Long Island doctors say.

In the week ending Saturday, there were 61 newly reported COVID-19 cases in Long Island hospitals, state Health Department data released Thursday shows. That’s up sharply from July, when the number of new cases varied between 13 and 21 each week.

Trends statewide are similar, with 343 new cases between Sept. 6-12.

“It’s fallen into this predictable pattern of an end-of-summer or summer surge, as well as the winter,” said Dr. Alan Bulbin, director of infectious diseases at St. Francis Hospital & Heart Center in Flower Hill.

Hospitalizations typically peak each year in the first days of January, after holiday gatherings that facilitate the spread of the virus.

Hospitalizations are somewhat lower than during early and mid-September last year, when there were 84 hospitalizations on Long Island for the week ending Sept. 13, 2025.

The number of documented COVID-19 cases on Long Island and statewide has been rising at roughly the same rate as hospitalizations, state data shows. Those numbers, though, are believed to be vast undercounts of the actual number of cases, because they only include laboratory tests, not the results of home COVID-19 tests or people who did not test themselves.

Most people are hospitalized for COVID-19 because the virus exacerbated an existing health condition, Bulbin said. COVID-19 may cause someone with a heart condition to have breathing problems or cause glucose levels to spike to dangerous levels in someone with diabetes, Bulbin said.

Even so, he said, “most of the patients when they’re admitted now, it’s not to an ICU.”

Fatalities remain low compared with several years ago. From mid-May through Sept. 5, three people have died in Long Island hospitals of COVID-19-related causes, compared with 924 people who died in the region’s hospitals for one week alone in mid-April 2020. Statewide, weekly COVID-19 deaths have hovered between nine and 15 people in recent weeks.

More than 80% of COVID-19 deaths are of people over 65, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

People with COVID-19 tend to be less sick today than in the past in part because of built-up immunity, said Dr. Aaron Glatt, chairman of medicine and chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in Oceanside. Previous COVID-19 infections and vaccinations increase the body’s ability to fight the virus, he said.

In addition, older adults and others at highest risk are more likely to receive COVID-19 vaccines and be more cautious about being in large crowds, Glatt said.

The vaccine is generally only effective in preventing infection for about 12 weeks, but it offers longer-term protection against severe disease, said Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of public health and epidemiology at Northwell Health.

The Food and Drug Administration last month approved this season's COVID-19 vaccine only for people 65 and older or for those with certain health conditions that put them at higher risk for severe outcomes. But New York State and major medical groups advise all adults, children 6 to 23 months and children with certain health conditions to receive the vaccine.

Farber strongly recommended the vaccine for people 65 and older, people who are immunocompromised and those with medical conditions that put them at higher risk for COVID-19.

He said getting a vaccine is “reasonable thing to do” for younger adults without major health conditions, but “not something I think is critically important.”

The number of people receiving the vaccine has fallen significantly in the past few years. Only 16.3% of New York adults had received the 2025-26 COVID vaccine by late February, the end of the winter COVID-19 season, down from 22.5% the season before and a large majority in 2021, when the vaccine was first widely available.

Despite the federal government’s less robust recommendations for the vaccine under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, most major private insurers are continuing to cover the vaccine, AHIP, an insurance trade group that includes most major U.S. health insurers, said in a statement.

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com@DavidOlson11

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.