NJ Gov. Murphy says surge in Covid hospitalizations should be a wake-up call to unvaccinated

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy issued a warning Monday to residents who haven’t yet received a Covid vaccine, advising them to register for their first doses as hospitalizations and ventilator usage climbs across the state.

While Covid cases appear to be leveling off in New Jersey, hospitalizations, ICU room use and ventilator use are all surging across the state, Murphy said. New cases jumped 5% from a week ago to a seven-day average of 2,003 new cases as of Sunday, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Nearly 1,100 people are hospitalized for Covid in New Jersey with 209 of them in intensive care, according to federal and state data. Murphy said 51% of Covid ICU patients are on ventilators. But Murphy said the number of ventilators deployed statewide has increased by about 25% over the past week, adding that hospitalizations have risen as well by more than 10% from last Monday.

“These figures should be a wake-up call to the threat that the delta variant poses, again, overwhelmingly to the unvaccinated,” Murphy said.

Despite the uptick in ventilator usage, New Jersey has the lowest percentage of ICU beds utilized for Covid in the entire country, Murphy touted. Less than 7% of all the state’s ICU beds are occupied by Covid patients, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, compared with 30.5% of ICU beds treating Covid patients nationwide.

Of New Jersey’s nearly 5.2 million fully vaccinated residents, just over 12,200 have contracted breakthrough Covid cases, Murphy said. And only 307 fully vaccinated individuals in New Jersey have required hospitalization for their symptoms, he added.

“If you’re on the fence, look at these numbers,” Murphy said. “There is no reason to leave your health and the health of your family to mere chance. The vaccines work.” 

With the delta variant surging, Murphy has implemented a series of mask and vaccine measures aimed at curbing community spread of the virus. The governor recommended that state residents wear masks in high-risk indoor settings on July 28 and mandated Covid tests the following week for select state employees who aren’t vaccinated.

Murphy also announced on Aug. 6 that all staff and students at New Jersey’s schools would have to comply with an indoor mask mandate to start the school year. He said at the briefing that all school districts would have free access to a stockpile of roughly 6 million KN95 and surgical masks, and an additional 500,000 masks for children.