NY expanding COVID booster eligibility to those who 'feel at risk.' What to know

As COVID-19 infections surge, New York is expanding eligibility for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to include those who "feel at risk" based on their job and community transmission, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday.

The comments came after New York City took similar steps to expand booster access earlier in the day, despite COVID-19 risks there remaining less severe than much of upstate New York.

"I am strongly encouraging all New Yorkers who live or work in a high-risk setting to get the booster," Hochul said in a statement, noting she received the booster and believes "no one who feels they are at risk should be turned away from getting a COVID-19 booster shot."

Previously, the state restricted eligibility to New Yorkers based on them being ages 65 and above, working in high-risk jobs or having underlying health conditions, as well as those living in long-term care or institutional settings.

Despite the eligibility expansion, guidelines for New York City and the rest of the state showed boosters remain restricted to those ages 18 and above. And it must be at least six months after people completed the two-shot series for Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines.

New Yorkers ages 18 and above who had received Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine series were already eligible to get a second-dose booster.

It wasn't immediately clear if state regulators would impose specific metrics to define COVID-19 risk for booster eligibility. For example, Hochul alluded to a "high-risk" setting, suggesting New York may rely on the prior standards set by federal regulators.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had established substantial or high COVID risks to mean counties with at least 50 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population over the past seven days, or a COVID test positivity rate of 8% and above.

That designation would currently apply to nearly half of New York's 62 counties based on the per-capita COVID-19 case metric. The state Department of Health didn't immediately return a request for comment Monday.

The booster campaign expansion came as new coronavirus cases leaped 25% in New York in the week ending Sunday, and the state ranked 27th among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.

The COVID positivity rates soared above 8% for the first time in months in the Finger Lakes and western New York on a seven-day average, even while rates in New York City hovered around 1%.

Statewide, the positivity rate hit 3.2%, and the rates started to creep up in the Hudson Valley (2.5%), Southern Tier (4.6%) and central New York (5.6%).

In New York City, Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi announced Monday he was issuing an advisory to all health providers in New York City to expand access to COVID-19 boosters.

"Clinicians should allow adult patients to determine their own risk of exposure, based on their individual circumstances," he wrote on Twitter. "In practice, this means that providers should not turn a patient away if they request a booster."

More than 630,000 people in New York City have received COVID-19 boosters, Chokshi noted.

By late October, there were 731,236 “additional doses” of COVID-19 vaccines administered overall in New York state, including boosters and shots given to immunocompromised people, which was authorized Aug. 13, according to numbers provided by the state Department of Health on Oct. .

More: New York COVID cases jumped 25%, and these regions exceeded 8% positivity. Check by county 

Joseph Spector of USA TODAY Network contributed to this report.

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David Robinson is the state health care reporter for the USA TODAY Network New York. He can be reached atdrobinson@gannett.com and followed on Twitter:@DrobinsonLoHud