New York, New Jersey see lowest COVID hospitalizations since pandemic started: 'It's just night and day'

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In the early days of the pandemic in spring 2020, Dr. Shereef Elnahal said 300 COVID-19 patients a day were filling pgslot  the beds at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, and so many people were showing up in the emergency room that triage tents. had to be set up in the parking lot.

Elnahal, the CEO of University Hospital and the former New Jersey Commissioner of Health, recalled in an interview with ABC News that it was "the worst crisis that's really ever hit the hospital" and the Garden State's largest city.

But this week, New Jersey and New York each recorded the lowest number of coronavirus hospitalizations since the pandemic started roughly 18 months ago.

The total number of COVID patients hospitalized in New Jersey fell to 293 on Monday. A day earlier, New York reported that a total of 330 COVID patients were hospitalized.

By comparison, at the height of the pandemic in April 2020, 18,825 COVID patients were hospitalized across the state of New York, while New Jersey had 6,127 patients hospitalized with the virus, according to data from both states.

An average of around 11,200 patients are currently hospitalized with the virus across the country, down by 13% in the last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

"It's just really incredible news and a long time coming," Elnahal said.

He said University Hospital now has less than 10 hospitalized COVID patients and that "it's been quite some time since we've even had a COVID-19 death."