Douglaston ZIP Has Lowest COVID Rate In Queens, BK, Bronx: Data

DOUGLASTON, QUEENS — Douglaston is among the most-vaccinated neighborhoods in Queens, and it’s now the area with the lowest coronavirus rates in the borough, city data shows, reflecting the demographic trends of New York’s pandemic recovery.

The Douglaston-Little Neck ZIP code of 11363 is the only ZIP code in Queens that dipped below a one percent seven-day coronavirus positivity rate this week, and the area only had one reported positive COVID-19 case between April 18 and 24, data shows.

In addition to leading Queens as the ZIP code with the lowest coronavirus positivity rate, the Douglaston-Little Neck 0.61 percent positivity rate is lower than any other ZIP code in Brooklyn or the Bronx, according to citywide data.

The low rate comes as a growing majority of people in Douglaston get their coronavirus vaccine — more than 70 percent of adults in the 11363 ZIP code have had at least one shot, and more than half are fully vaccinated, data shows.

Those rates exceed the borough’s overall vaccination rate, and rates in the city at large.

Citywide, just over half, 52 percent, of New Yorkers have gotten at least their first dose, and just over one-third, 35 percent, are fully vaccinated. Similarly, in Queens those rates were 55 and 36 percent as of Tuesday, respectively.

Fewer than 40 percent of residents in some neighborhoods in Queens — primarily those populated by lower-income, people of color, especially in southeast Queens — have received their first COVID-vaccine.

Far Rockaway, which has become a case study in the vaccine rollout disparities, remains the area with the lowest percentage of vaccinated adults citywide.

As of Tuesday only 32 percent of residents in the 11619 ZIP code had received their first jab, compared with the nearly entirely white neighborhood of Breezy Point on the Rockaway Peninsula’s western tip, where 87 percent of adults are partially vaccinated.

The higher-than-average vaccination rate in Douglaston — an upper-class, and majority white neighborhood, according to census data — conforms with the findings that vaccine rollout has been segmented based on race and class.

A piece by Gothamist this week found that the vaccine campaigns has improved “by a few percentage points” in neighborhoods of color, but wealthier and whiter neighborhoods are still faring better overall, just as the city is confronted with a sudden drop in vaccine demand and a “plateau” in vaccination rates among Black communities in recent weeks.

“Work with communities, we need these efforts to elevate demand and administration of the vaccine,” Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, told Gothamist.