More than 9,000 New Yorkers are now hospitalized with COVID-19, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday, surpassing the levels of January 2021's peak surge and reaching levels not seen since May 2020 as omicron's infectiousness continues to envelop the Empire State at a rapid pace. Statewide hospitalizations stand at 9,563, 290 admissions higher than the most recent peak on Jan. 18, 2021 and a 790-patient increase since Sunday. The total marks a 199% increase in the last month alone and a five-fold increase since Nov. 1. Daily deaths hit the triple digits (103) on Monday for the first time since vaccinations became widely available early last year. New daily cases dropped a bit to around 51,700, though with less testing done and lags in reporting over the holiday weekend, Hochul called that number misleading and said she is certain the overnight counts will climb. "Those numbers are going to be much higher tomorrow. They didn't go from, really, 90,000 to 51,000. That is simply a function of people not getting tested over the weekend," Hochul said as she shared "shocking" rolling rates. "This is not the wave we saw last year, where it kept just going up and up. It's just going straight up."