N.J. COVID Hospitalizations Rise

As the pandemic drags on into its 19th month, COVID hospitalizations—after first shooting past 8,000 in New Jersey, then dropping, then rising dramatically last winter, then falling again—are once again going back up.

Mary Ellen Levine, the president of the New Jersey State Nurses Association, said the pandemic has been a series of twists and turns, highs and lows for nurses and “there really is this overwhelming sense of just not really feeling they were ever out of it. They’re really wondering if it ever left.”

She said over the past year and a half, nurses have gotten a much better grasp on COVID but it’s still exhausting.

“The PPE all the time, keeping everyone in isolation as best as you can—we thought we’d be over it, we thought we’d kind of move past it and it’s disappointing that we haven’t yet,” said Levine.

She pointed out…