While there’s hope on the horizon with coronavirus vaccines expected to arrive in New Jersey later this month, Gov. Phil Murphy warned Friday that the next few months include “a lot of lethal realities” with COVID-19 cases filling hospital beds and deaths on the rise.
And the Thanksgiving-effect is still likely a week away from being realized, he said.
“We’re in for a brutal two or three months,” Murphy said during a television appearance on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC. “We’re mainly indoors, it’s the holiday season and there’s pandemic fatigue. No matter how good you are at enforcing the rules of the road, we can’t get into everyone’s living room.”
Murphy said “anecdotal evidence” suggests New Jersey residents heeded warnings to stay home and keep Thanksgiving gatherings small. But potential post-holiday infections are still unknown because someone exposed to COVID-19 on Thanksgiving would take several days to see symptoms and then several more days more to receive test results.
“We’ve not seen the post-Thanksgiving peak,” Murphy said during a second interview with PIX-11. “You really need to be 10-14 days out tor really get a sense. We’re still awaiting what that’s going to look like.”
New Jersey’s 71 hospitals reported 3,315 patients with confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases as of Thursday night. That’s the highest since May 18. Hospitalizations climbed steadily through November before a brief dip over Thanksgiving, but have since continue to rise for six straight days.
“Our hospitalizations are way up,” Murphy said on MSNBC. “Were watching that very closely. I think we have the capacities as it relates to beds, PPE, ventilators.”
Current “moderate” outcome modeling by Murphy’s Office of Innovation projects the second wave to have a peak of hospitalizations at nearly 5,000 patients by New Year’s Day.
That model presumes “significant social distancing, everyone wearing masks and uniform spreading characteristics without super spreader incidents,” according the Office of Innovation. Any shift in behavior, for better or worse, could lead to a corresponding outcome.
While that’s still well short of the 8,300 COVID-19 patients that were in hospitals in mid-April, this time New Jersey won’t be able to count on help from health care workers from other states, Murphy noted.
“I do worry about health care workers,” Murphy said. “The bullpen is short relative to where it was in the spring.”
During the first wave of the outbreak in March and April when cases were focused in New York and New Jersey, the state’s hospitals brought in health professionals from other states to help, particularly as front-line workers became infected.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted Friday that his state is expected to run out of intensive care beds in its hospitals by mid-month.
All 21 counties are now orange on the state’s COVID-19 map, indicating “high” virus activity across the state. If any area moves to red, indicating “very high” coronavirus activity, all schools in that region will be advised to close classrooms and switch to all-remote learning, according to state health guidelines.
Asked on PIX-11 what it would take for a region to shift to red, Murphy said, “it’s a formula,” but didn’t elaborate, only saying, “our health department tracks this like a hawk.”
Murphy said Wednesday that 438 districts are using a hybrid model, 89 are fully open for in-person, 246 are all-remote and 38 districts have a combination of models.
NJ Advance Media staff writers Matt Arco, Kelly Heyboer and Nick Devlin contributed to this report.
Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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