westchester

<b>News 12</b>'s Rich Barrabi was joined by Dr. Andrew Handel to talk about masks and an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

News 12's Rich Barrabi was joined by Dr. Andrew Handel to talk about masks and an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Bronx

BX | Weather

BXFORECAST

Now, the question I have about the mayor is that the weather down in DC, a warmer than the weather here because it's got to be at least a little bit better. It is a little bit warmer in DC. But you know, we are dealing with that really cold pocket of air that is taking us just for one more day. But we are going to turn our eyes for the weekend an early look for what are some potential impacts for this storm. So some thunderstorms in December, that's what is possible for Sunday evening into Monday, steady rain isolated flooding high winds of 40 MPH or even stronger that can knock down some decorations even cause some scattered power outages and then temperatures start to crash. So we're forecasting a high of 61 on Sunday by Monday night. It's going to be in the 30. So that's something that we need to monitor in terms of tomorrow. Another very cold start, temperatures will be near 29 feeling much colder than that high. Tomorrow will be in the low forties, feeling like the mid thirties throughout the day. A few flurries possible by the early afternoon drying out and clouds clearing out by Friday. Seeing more of that sunshine seasonable fill with highs in the upper forties. Saturday will actually be the pick of the week. We're going to see that beautiful sunshine highs in the mid fifties and then we're watching for some stormy weather on Sunday.

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Weather

Brooklyn

BK | Weather

Connecticut

CT | Weather

CTFORECAST

All right. So getting ready for Christmas and it feels like Christmas. Right. Not over the weekend. I mean, this is incredible warmth coming our way highs in the fifties on Saturday, 60 degrees on Sunday, but it's not going to be sunny and 60. It's actually going to be stormy and 60. So a lot of rain coming up and some damaging winds along for the ride. None of that tomorrow, it's the complete opposite, complete opposite season too. It's definitely going to feel like winter tomorrow dress, the part layered up temperatures below freezing and it's going to feel even colder with those winds. I don't foresee any issues on the roads because of the weather and if you have to work outside or just stand outside for a period of time, make sure you're protected, I think by now, you probably know and don't forget the hat, the gloves and the scarf too, just break out all the warm winter gear because temperatures will stay in the thirties. And that's something that we usually see a little bit later in the winter. More of a January feel. So for tomorrow's temperatures running below average and the wind on top of that is really what makes it worse. And then tomorrow night it's cold but it's not as cold. At least, temperatures are a little bit closer to freezing. So that's a stepping stone because we go up from there. Highs on Friday 49 I think you'll like that. Saturday, Sunday, fifties and sixties. That's really temporary. Once that nasty weather comes through, there could be a very thin squall line at the tail end of that showers exit Monday and then it's back into the forties for next week. That's a look at your local forecast. Thanks Michelle.

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Hudson Valley

HV | Weather

HVFORECAST

Well, winter right around the corner. And will we be seeing any bitter cold temperatures in the Hudson Valley? That is the question for Addison Kevin. I happen to have the answer one more day. Then we're gonna get a little bit better out there. But will we be staying that way for long? You know, that's a different story. But let's break it down for you over the course of the next few mornings where after we go past tomorrow morning, Thursday morning, where temperatures will be feeling the ops by Friday morning, it'll be feeling, feeling better, I should say. And Saturday, we're certainly not feeling that chill in the air as milder air is moving this way. In fact, Saturday is going to be the brighter of the two weekend days ahead. It's a 5050 split. Saturday is a gem Sunday, a little stormy but overnight and then towards your Thursday, we still keep that cold air around. You may see a flurry of two come on in including going around the sunset time frame. As Hanukkah begins, we'll be dealing with temperatures around 37 degrees, feeling around the low thirties and then moving on into the evening hours. Any little bit of flurry activity that was around earlier is gone. Now, the pick of the week it's Saturday, 55 degrees. Temperatures running 10 degrees plus above average, it'll be a nice, mild feeling in the air for southerly flow coming up this way. But we'll watch a system move in towards our region for Sunday continuously. Bringing up that southerly flow, push and more moisture up. This way, the winds will start to increase and we'll get batches of rain coming on in through Sunday afternoon through the evening hours, wrapping up by early Monday morning. So any of those holiday lights that are around your household, maybe some loose trees as well. They may be impacted by some of those gusty winds. Potentially. On the way for your Thursday morning, we're waking up in Newb with a temperature of fuel in around 21 degrees out towards White Plains of 24. There are a few passing snow showers trying to come on down this way, but they'll dry out, fizzle out as the air is moving on down from the northwest to a southeast. Skies are coming out nicely for Friday morning. We'll just see a mix of sun and clouds going out through the day on Friday before this system starts to inch closer towards the east coast. By Saturday. It's pushing into the Ohio River Valley down towards the Deep South. It's heading up towards our vicinity for your day on Sunday. But notice before noon it's just on our doorstep. So the first half of your Sunday looking pretty good. Second half, not so much. That's why we got the red box right there and we'll watch this system be leaving our area early Monday morning with some breezy winds to follow.

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Long Island

LI | Weather

LIFORECAST

At least we'll have that sunshine to kick off your Thursday. So in the morning, we're in the twenties in the afternoon, Kings Park 41 degrees. It will become mostly cloudy again. Uh Tomorrow is very similar to today. We could have a couple of flurries in the afternoon, not a big deal. And then we have sunshine and warmer weather on the way. Look at our numbers the next few days. They're on the rise, especially Saturday to Sunday, Sunday. We are near 60 degrees, but our weather will slow, go downhill through the day. So at the bus stop in the morning, 28 heading home from school 42. With that passing flurry, you can see that we are dry to wake up. The blue color is showing you that cold weather in place. Three o'clock in the afternoon. We have those thirties to near 40 at night into Friday morning, not as cold thirties. And then we get up into the upper forties nearing 50 by Friday afternoon. It's dry with more of a southwest wind. Saturday is my pick of the week. It will be beautiful, sunny and warm Sunday starts out dry with some sun, the breeze out of the south will pick up through the day. Late afternoon. There may be a very brief shower, but you see most of the rain is just sitting off to our west throughout the day and it will approach late in the evening. This is nine o'clock. We have that rain in New Jersey to New York City on our door up most of the rainfalls overnight. So most of us will be sleeping through it. It could be heavy at times with gusty winds and it's out of here by Monday morning, Monday afternoon will improve, but we'll have some lingering gusty winds. So get ready for a cold night. We see those warming temperatures through the weekend with that rain. Sunday night, Monday morning could be a little bit wet and windy with sunshine.

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New Jersey

NJ Weather Stories

Weather stories

NJ | Weather

NJFORECAST

There it is. Right. But pat very best wishes from us here at News 12. That's, that's, that's awesome. Happy birthday. Ok, let's see where we're getting uh to the forecast. As we go through the next couple of days, we are going to be looking for, let's say mainly cloudy skies for the first part of the overnight hours. Then as we get closer to date break, we'll start to see the skies begin to clear. So right now we're sitting at 37 we'll watch the temperatures drop down into the upper twenties. There is going to be a bit of a wind chill. So the numbers here that you're looking at those are the forecasted lows take 10 degrees off of that. That's likely what it's going to feel like waking up tomorrow morning. We're also going to keep an eye on the opportunity for a few scattered snow showers to move across the area. I mean, you saw some snow showers earlier today, but there wasn't enough oomph in the atmosphere to actually get that snow to collect tomorrow. There is a possibility that we might actually see some gusty winds moving some of these lake enhanced snow showers towards New Jersey. Otherwise the cold air will continue for tonight going into tomorrow and then this fair weather system moves away. We start to see the temperatures begin to warm for the second half of the work week going into the upcoming weekend. But with that warmth comes the opportunity for a wind driven rain. On Sunday, Sunday does not look like a great end to the upcoming weekend. Let me, let me stress that. I think Sunday afternoon is cloudy but not necessarily raining the rain or at least the steady, more consistent rain is likely going to up here in New Jersey, probably sometime after about five o'clock in the evening. And then the weather really starts going downhill for Sunday night, going in a very early Monday morning. So on the chillier side for tomorrow, temperatures begin to rebound on Friday with mainly sunny skies. Saturday starts off with sunshine. We end up with some cloud coverage but still a dry day. Most of Sunday early afternoon is cloudy. The rain doesn't start until after about dinner time. But once it starts to pick up, there's an opportunity for a 1 to 2 inch rainfall. There is also an opportunity to see maybe winds gusting to between 4060 miles an hour, especially at the shoreline. That system goes away and we've got some beautiful weather for next week and temperatures are on the cold side of seasonable. I'll have more details on that in just moments. Sounds good, Dave. Thank you, cycling for a suspect tonight and three things to know.

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Westchester

WC | Weather

Article 290545 Thumbnail

The New Normal: What's next in the fight against COVID-19?

412TheNewNormalWhatsNext

All right. Dr handle. Let's begin with this issue of masks. I think a lot of people were surprised to hear that a mandate will be back in place in philadelphia Colombia will require them again inside of classrooms. Do you think other cities or places will and should follow suit? I think we're in this transitional period right now where we've seen that cases rise at different rates in different areas and it's hard to know which direction the case rates are going to go locally on Long Island were certainly see a slow increase in the number of covid cases, but not the hospitalizations. And so we're piecing together what's best for our area with what's best within individual regions. I think it is going to depend on those numbers and really the hospitalization rates. So in some places where the rates are going up more quickly than others, it is going to make sense to start putting on masks. But also, the truth is, the mask mandates require more than just what's medically necessary. There's a lot of other moving pieces that go along with it. Uh And so I do think that we're going to see a lot more individualized regional decisions made rather than large decisions made, uh, you know, for entire, for the entire country all at once. Like we've seen before. You know, it's one of those situations again, doctor where you've got conflicting messages from the White House and from local governments. You've gotta see Gianna, the new White House covid coordinator saying yes, we're going to see this happen. There will be fluctuations then philadelphia immediately puts a mask mandate back in place. I'm not gonna ask you to weigh in on the politics or the public policy, but what's your suggestion to people living everyday life new york, New Jersey Connecticut? How should they conduct their business and keep themselves safe? Not to start like a broken record. But the first thing I would recommend it for everyone who has not yet vaccinated and not yet boosted to go ahead and do so because that's going to keep us safer than anything else we've seen with the more recently, the first american variant that patients who are individuals who are vaccinated are less likely to go on to have severe disease in terms of the masked men wearing masking for myself in situations where I'm going to more crowded areas. I do wear a mask still. But I think again, it is, it's a little bit challenging right now. We're trying to figure out exactly which way these numbers are going to are going to lead us. Well, you know, you you consider the numbers and the fact that we have all these at home tests now as well. So I'm not even sure how accurate these numbers are doctor. Is that a concern for you? Absolutely. So that's a big portion of what's going on. I'm certain people are less likely to to test themselves at this point and many of the people who do are going to be using home tests and those numbers might not be reported to to the local department of health or the CDC down the chain. And so with that it is hard to get a good grasp on exactly where the numbers are. Um So again, as we're looking locally, what's more helpful to me than anything else in the hospitalization rates, because those are really hard to fudge. The hospitalization rates for covid are the hospitalization rates. And so I do think that's a little more telling than the actual case counts. So is that the biggest part of this component when tracking B. A. To the stealth variant? The fact that yeah, you've got cases going up again. Maybe we don't really know the true numbers, but what we do know is how many people are showing up in the hospital and what we know there is that those numbers are not seeing a huge spike, right? Absolutely. So that's that's where things are at the moment. So I don't want to cause more alarm than is necessary. You also wanna remember that hospitalization numbers and those rates are going to be delayed behind the actual case counts. So weekend, because it takes some time for people to get sick and actually require them to go into the hospital. And so when we're looking at the numbers, you want to keep in mind that by the time the hospitalization rates are higher, we already have a decent spike on our hands. So when you look at these numbers and you look at the hospitalization. Right. And you know, even the data regarding B. A. Two is showing that people are not getting as sick on the whole from this variant as opposed to others. Do you attribute that to just it being a weaker strain? Or is this do do the higher vaccination rate and people contracting the virus who are vaccinated? I would say all of the above. We know that the original omicron strain and this Nubia to strain are quite similar and that they're very contagious but they also on average tend to cause less severe disease. And so when I'm looking at the hospitalization numbers, it does seem like having increased of course constantly increasing vaccination rates. And so that keeps people out of the hospital. But also in terms of the strain itself, it is less does cause less severe infections, but that said for people who are high risk, so people who are older individuals, people who are overweight, people who have high blood pressure and diabetes. Those are certainly risk factors and people who are immunocompromised. Those are risk factors for ending up in the hospital. So especially if you meet one of those categories, those criteria, you do want to think about re masking at this point when you're in any higher risk situations. How do you view the current projection trajectory of the virus? Are we safe in assuming that this next strain in the strain after that may be more infectious but won't necessarily result in hospitalization or are we jumping to farther when we go that route. So that is that is the classic teaching of infectious diseases that we've all been keeping our fingers crossed for since day one of this pandemic. That over time just like we saw with the influenza pandemic of 1918 over over time these viruses become less cause less severe disease and are more contagious. So we're hoping that's what's going to happen. But also we've said a lot of things that turned out to not really pan out for this pandemic. So I get a little nervous about giving it a, you know, a definite on it. But when we saw that the original american variant back in january was was doing exactly, that was more contagious but less severe we took that has to be a really nice sign that maybe the pandemic is is going to move in that direction as we hope it will doctor, you're a pediatric infectious disease expert and so you have been seeing this day in day out on a very personal level for two plus years and here we are now and still in a situation where those who are five and younger cannot get vaccinated, there is no vaccine available. How important is it to get a vaccine? Of course safely. But across the finish line to a point where it can be implemented and can finally be used to protect the youngest of the young, it's crucial. I have my own young Children and I'm very excited for the day to come when when we are able to vaccinate them for a lot of parents of young Children. They're still living with a lot of those precautions that people have been vaccinated have are not necessarily following us closely anymore. But families are having trouble living their lives and going out and enjoying bringing their Children into to larger events like like they would have otherwise been able to before this pandemic. Um so there's there's those limitations. There's kids who are you know required to stay home from school for long times because they're not vaccinated. And of course although it's not all that time and we certainly do have kids who get admitted to the hospital and I've taken care of young Children in the ICU. Because of Covid or the post Covid inflammatory syndrome that we've heard about, that M. I. S. C. And and all of those things are really detrimental for these Children. So getting a safe effective vaccine out for these kids is incredibly important. Are you still seeing that inflammatory syndrome? Because I can remember a point where you know, for a couple of weeks that was the big headline, wait a minute. You know, we had thought kids were mostly spared from COVID, we're talking 2020 now and then we heard about this inflammatory uh situation that was very dangerous. Is that something you're still seeing today? Uh, so I would say not at this moment, we're not seeing many cases essentially. What happens is there's a spike in cases, a large, large number of kids are gonna get infected. And then this post and post covid inflammatory syndrome typically happens about 4 to 6 weeks afterwards. And so it's usually about a month or so after the last spike that we move on to seeing more of these cases. But it certainly is when I when I have Children who come into the hospital with high fevers and symptoms of that syndrome, it's certainly something that we're taking into consideration every day and we're still seeing a few cases cases on occasion. But if this if this be a to spike does does hit higher numbers, we will certainly see more of those cases. When you look at the vaccination rates, you go by age group, the older you go, the higher the vaccination rate and as you go further down, that rate really declines. And that makes a certain amount of logical sense. But dr are you concerned that as we wait longer and longer for a vaccine for the youngest Children, that reluctance from parents to vaccinate their kids only continues to grow? I do think so, especially as the variants become less severe and cause less severe illness for patients on average, that is something that we're seeing. Um, I do want to drive home the point. You know, again, we do see kids who admitted to the hospital and it's hard to predict which kids will end up in the hospital with severe disease. And so it is, um, it is someone not somewhat frustrating. We we do want to encourage all Children too who are eligible to get the vaccine. Again, it is for their benefit and it's also for the benefit of everyone around them because they're less likely to pass it on to others, including their, their family and other people who come in contact with you, maybe, uh, risk of more severe disease. So when you say, it can be unpredictable to determine how a child will react to contracting covid and what the symptoms will be. You're saying, a child who is, you know, previously believed to be perfectly healthy, is still at risk here, potentially. Right? Yes, Absolutely. They don't, they don't make up a large number of the people admitted to hospitals covid, but absolutely. I've seen kids who are otherwise healthy who can either have, again the post covid inflammatory syndrome or who ends up with covid itself and have to be admitted to the hospital for it on the whole. Do you see parents in the age groups that are able to get their Children vaccinated becoming more receptive to doing just that or on the flip side maybe saying, you know what the worst is behind us. We're good, Like you said, as the Children get younger, there's more hesitancy and, and I think a less urgency from parents to get their kids vaccinated. Um, that is something we've seen. And also what happens is each time that these vaccines are approved. So when we saw the 5 to 11 year old group get approved, there is a quick uh, spike in the number of patients who are people who are getting their kids vaccinated. And then it dwindled off pretty quickly. Um, and so it seems like the people who are most urgent go out and do it immediately and then afterwards. The numbers kind of slow down a little bit. But again, that's why you hear advertisements on the news and on, on, on the radio of pediatricians talking about their own kids getting vaccinated and encouraging their patients, their, their, their families to have their Children, their pediatric patients vaccinated as well.

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