As Delta Spreads, Virus Cases in New York City Tick Up

But health experts don’t expect the recent increase to reach the levels seen in New York City’s first and second waves.

Fueled by the Delta variant, daily coronavirus case counts in New York City have begun climbing in recent days, even as the city seems determined to turn the page on the pandemic. Just a few weeks ago, there were only 200 new cases a day across the city on average, the lowest level since the early days of the pandemic. But the city has now had a streak of days with 400 or more cases. And the test positivity rate has doubled: from below 0.6 percent on average to about 1.3 percent. Those numbers are still low, but the increase has been swift, surprising some epidemiologists and public health officials who had not expected to see cases jump so quickly after remaining level throughout June.