‘Vast majority’ of hospitalized kids are unvaccinated. Paris makes an outdoor masking rule. Another 1,000 flights canceled. This is just the beginning.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams and city officials Thursday unveiled his plan to combat Covid-19 in the new year, with officials notably teasing that the private sector vaccine mandate will stay in effect and a decision on whether to mandate vaccines for students is to be decided by the spring.

Adams said Covid-19 is a “formidable” opponent worthy of a “formidable plan.”

“We must allow our city to function,” he said adding he intends to “follow the science,” promote equity in resources and overall, “be smatter, live with Covid, and protect everyday New Yorkers.”

Vaccines and booster still remain the “best weapons in our arsenal” he said, adding the overall objective is to “keep our city open.”

The plan focuses on six priorities: vaccination; supporting hospitals and congregate settings; testing; treatment; slowing the spread; and safer schools.

The current NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi, who will stay on through March, said the private sector employer mandate will stay effect in the new year.

“Studying it encompasses both following the emerging science on the importance of booster doses with omicron as well as understanding the impact of the mandate on the settings it would apply to,” he added.

The city will set a deadline of this spring for a decision about a vaccine mandate in schools that would, if decided upon, commence later in 2022, Chokshi said.

While the city added 60 more testing sites after the emergence of Omicron, test and trace will continue to stand up more sites, he added. 

The incoming NYC health commissioner said the city will also focus on upping access to monoclonal antibodies including oral medication with a “focus on equity” and reaching underserved, high risk populations.

The city also plans to distribute 2 million high-grade masks via community based organizations and city health sites, said Dr. Ashwin Vasan, who will take over for Chokshi in March as health commissioner.

Vasan also added that the city plans to come up with a universal, color-coded system that shows level of threat at any time of Covid-19 within the city and indicates clearly what level of safety measures are in place.

More on the NYC Covid-19 plan: As previously announced by the current NYC mayor and leadership, as well as the governor, on Jan. 3 the city will implement the “stay safe stay open” plan, officials said.

This includes doubling surveillance testing in schools, adjusting the situation room and contact tracing protocols, sending home millions of rapid at-home tests, and strengthening mitigation including high quality masks and ventilation.

Portugal will shorten its mandatory self-isolation period for asymptomatic Covid-19 patients from 10 to seven days, the national Directorate-General of Health (DGS) announced Thursday. 

According to the DGS, the new guidance will come into effect by the end of next week.

On Thursday, Portugal reported a new record of 28,659 daily coronavirus cases, as well as 16 further Covid-19 related deaths.

Portugal’s decision comes a day after Spain’s health ministry announced it would reduced the quarantine time for people who tested positive for Covid-19 from 10 to seven days.

Princeton University announced on Monday that they are delaying undergraduate student returns by one week and will not allow students to travel outside of the county until mid-February. 

Undergraduate students will only be allowed to return to campus no earlier than Jan. 14, instead of the previously planned date of Jan. 7, Dean Jill Dolan and Vice President W. Rochelle Calhoun said in an email to the school. 

In addition, the email says that undergraduate students will not be allowed to travel outside of Mercer County or neighboring Plainsboro Township in New Jersey, where the university is located, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” The travel ban will be in effect until mid-February, the school said, and it will revisit the policy by Feb. 15. 

These measures are just a part of a larger plan to return to campus, which will also require undergraduate students to get tested once they arrive on campus and will not be allowed to attend class until they have a negative test. They will also be required to get a booster shot by Jan. 31, or within 30 days of the student is eligible, the email says. 

All of these policies specifically apply to undergraduate students. It is not immediately clear what testing and travel requirements are in place for graduate students and faculty. 

Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CNN’s New Day Thursday that although they are still gathering the data, they are hearing from hospitals across the US that “the vast majority of the children who are being admitted are unvaccinated.”

Beers noted that at her own children’s hospital in Washington, DC, they are at an all-time peak of Covid-19 hospitalizations and about half of the them are children under five.

“I think it’s just so important for us to remember that we’re protecting ourselves, but we’re also protecting those little ones who aren’t yet eligible for vaccination,” Beers told CNN.

What the data is showing: US pediatric hospital admissions for Covid-19 are only 2.2% lower than their peak in early September, continuing a rapid increase since mid-December.

On average, 334 children have been admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 on any given day over the week that ended Dec. 27, according to data published Wednesday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health and Human Services. 

CNN’s Virginia Langmaid contributed reporting to this post.

Wearing a mask will be made mandatory in Paris’ outdoor public spaces starting Dec. 31, the Paris police prefecture said Wednesday.

The decision was made following “an incidence rate near 2,000 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, a level never reached before, due in particular to the Omicron variant,” according to the prefecture. 

France reported a daily record-breaking 208,099 Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, Health Ministry data shows.

Some context: Spain, Greece and Italy are among a host of countries that mandated masks outdoors again last Friday due to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

You can read more about the guidelines in Europe here.

A study from health science company ZOE has estimated that 75% of people in the UK experiencing new cold like symptoms in fact have symptomatic Covid-19.

In a news release Thursday, the ZOE study said their “data is now showing a fall in the number of non-COVID ‘colds’ and a continued rise in symptomatic COVID infections.”

The figures for new symptomatic cases are based on reports “from around 840,000 weekly contributors and the proportion of newly symptomatic users who have received positive swab tests,” the release added. 

The study which claims to be the world’s largest ongoing study on Covid-19 operates using scientific analysis from Kings College London and contributions from four million people globally.

As new cold like symptoms eclipse the traditional symptoms associated with the virus, the study’s scientists “want to see symptoms like sore throat, headache, and runny nose added” to the UK government list of symptoms “as soon as possible,” remarked ZOE study scientist Dr. Claire Steves.

The study also estimated that daily Covid-19 cases in the UK are set to surpass 200,000 in one to two days. 

The study’s data estimates that the UK is in fact recording 192,290 new daily symptomatic cases of Covid-19 on average, based on PCR and Lateral Flow Test data from up to three days ago. At least 183,037 cases were recorded on the UK government dashboard Wednesday. 

The UK’s “exponential growth in cases appears to have stopped,” Steves added, describing the current rise as “more steady.”

As cases among 55 to 77 year olds continue to rise, Steves predicted that “this will translate into more hospital admissions in the New Year.”

In the past eight days, six major health systems in the state of Georgia and metro Atlanta have experienced 100% to 200% increases in Covid-19 hospitalizations — with most of them coming from unvaccinated patients, according to a joint statement released by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory Healthcare, Grady Health System, Northeast Georgia Health System, Piedmont and Wellstar Health System.

The health systems are experiencing “a staggering surge in adults and children with Covid-19 symptoms and diagnoses,” at a time when the health systems are also preparing for an influx of flu patients, the statement says.

Because of significantly increased emergency room activity, the systems are asking people to seek Covid-19 testing elsewhere to keep emergency rooms available to those who have the most critical needs.

Airline cancellations are surging Thursday for a seventh straight day and threaten to throw off weekend flights home for holiday travelers.  

Carriers canceled more than 1,000 US flights on Thursday and have already canceled 500 from Friday’s schedule, according to the aviation tracking website FlightAware.  

In total, FlightAware recorded more than 8,500 US flight cancelations since Christmas Eve, when heavy holiday travel collided with a spike in coronavirus cases among industry workers and weather issues.  

Alaska Airlines said winter weather in the Pacific Northwest are causing it to cancel one out of every five flights at Seattle, its headquarters, to “allow for the additional time it takes to deice aircraft.” It canceled 14% of Thursday flights and asked passengers who do not need to travel this week to reschedule for a later date.  

JetBlue Airways told CNN it has “seen a surge in the number of sick calls from Omicron” and will cut its schedule for the next two weeks to “give our customers give as much notice possible to make alternate plans and reaccommodate them on other flights.”  It told Reuters the cuts amount to about 1,280 flights, or 10% of its schedule. JetBlue canceled about 17% of flights on Thursday, FlightAware said.  

Budget leisure carrier Allegiant Air canceled 17% of its flights, according to FlightAware, and warned customers telephone hold times were “unusually long.”   

United Airlines canceled 8% of its Thursday schedule, which FlightAware data show is about its average since Christmas Eve, and told CNN it is “managing this day by day.”  

Delta Air Lines canceled 3% of its Thursday schedule but warned that it expects storms headed for its hubs in Salt Lake City and Detroit to complicate travel “in the coming days.”  

The weather impacts aren’t limited to snow and ice. The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged the jet stream weather pattern over the US was “stronger than usual” on Tuesday, reaching 170 knots in the air above the Great Lakes. A strong jet stream can slow west-bound travel and speed up east-bound flights at the high altitudes where aircraft operate. 

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines told CNN it has “yet to see any impact on our operation” from coronavirus illnesses but is “closely monitoring this.” President and Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven told employees in a memo shared with CNN that Southwest carried 3 million passengers last week and canceled less than 1% of flights. 

Maryland and the District of Columbia are the latest to see all-time high hospitalization levels from Covid-19 — at a time when about 10 states are experiencing some of the highest hospitalization numbers of the pandemic.

According to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Maryland currently has 2,197 Covid-19 patients in the hospital, up 32% from just a week ago, topping the record previously set in January.

Washington, DC, has 514 Covid-19 cases in the hospital, more than double the number a week ago, and a far higher number than during any previous pandemic peak. 

Ohio hospitalizations, 5,609, are nearly tied with the state’s all-time record of 5,759 in December 2020.

Four other states — Connecticut, Indiana, Missouri and Delaware — are all seeing hospital numbers at least 80% as high as their all-time records last winter, according to a CNN analysis of HHS data.

And four states — Michigan, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire — hit their all-time pandemic peak hospitalization numbers this month, according to a CNN review of the data, though all four have seen hospitalizations decline in the last few days.

Here’s a look at how 2021 US Covid-19 hospitalizations compare to 2020: