The Mayor says that New York City is “winning” the fight against COVID-19.

During the first wave of the coronavirus that killed a lot of people in the spring of 2020, there were very few COVID Tests, so many people didn’t get reported. There has been a big drop in the number of cases and hospitalizations because of the fight against the Omicron surge.

Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said that he was optimistic about the fight against the Omicron surge because there had been a big drop in the number of cases and hospitalizations.

NYC’s mayor, Eric Adams, said Tuesday that the city was winning its fight against Omicron’s surge, noting that the number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations has started to go down a little bit.

Mr. Adams told people in New York to keep getting vaccinated, doing their COVID tests, and wearing masks.

People at a news conference at City Hall were told that “Let’s be clear about this: We are winning.” “We’re going to win because we’re strong.”

During his third week in office, Mr. Adams, who is a Democrat, said that the number of cases reported each day had dropped from more than 40,000 to less than 20,000. He also said that the number of people who are hospitalized each day has also dropped from about 6,500 to about 5,800.

Even tho Mr. Adams has been optimistic about the number of cases and has encouraged workers to return to work, experts say that New Yorkers should still be careful. Still, there are a lot more known cases than there were last winter, when there were about 6,500 cases a day on average.

The number of deaths, which is a lagging indicator, has been going up. In the last few days, there have been about 100 deaths a day, which is more than there have been since May 2020.

A wave of Omicron cases may be coming to an end in the northeastern United States, but the number of virus patients across the country is at a record high and rising. This is putting a strain on hospitals that have had their staffs decimated by the virus. There is still a lot of Omicron in the country, and the next few weeks are going to be very hard for a lot of people because more people are going to get sick and die. On Sunday, Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said that the Omicron surge had not yet reached its peak across the country.

People aren’t moving at the same speed all over the country, he said.

In her first budget speech on Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul also talked about how the state’s case rate and hospitalization numbers have been going down over time. She said the virus positivity rate in the state had dropped to 12.8 percent, which is about half of what it was on January 2. “We hope to finish this winter surge soon.”

Mr. Adams said he was happy that he was able to keep public schools open and that more students were coming back to school after a lot of people were absent earlier this month. Friday was the first day of school after the winter break. More than 75% of students were there, compared to 67% on the first day after the break,

Mr. Adams said that the city has already given out 4.5 million rapid home COVID Tests to students. These COVID Tests have found 25,000 cases.

There was talk last week about giving schools the option of having students learn from home, but David C. Banks, the chancellor of the schools in the state, said on Tuesday that it was not going to happen soon and that it would be hard to set up.

There is a lot of work, even for a short time, Mr. Banks said.

On vaccinations, Mr. Adams said that the city had hit a new milestone: 16 million doses had been given, with 2.5 million booster doses added to that number. He said that New York was still “not even close to where we needed to be” in its vaccination campaign. This is not what he meant.