Omicron drives Covid surge but New York a long way from pandemic’s early days

America's biggest city is seeing another winter spike, but with good vaccines and a new message many residents say this wave feels different

In the spring of 2020, Hart Island, a mile from City Island in the Bronx, was a focal point of grief in New York. It was here, at the city's public cemetery or potter's field, the final resting place of more than a million people, that officials ordered trenches dug to accommodate those the coronavirus was expected to kill.

The trenches were never filled. Many bodies were returned to funeral parlors or stored in mobile freezers on Randall's Island, better known for music festivals and the Frieze art fair than cold storage of corpses.