After announcing that statewide COVID cases and hospitalizations have dropped by 50% over the past week, Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday told Spectrum News 1 she believes New York state is turning the corner in the fight against the omicron variant.

"We are absolutely turning the corner," Hochul said during an appearance on Spectrum News NY1. "Tremendous progress has been made. The more people get vaccinated, especially our children, I'm so looking forward to the day when we don't have to have masks on anybody and our kids don't have to deal with this, but one way that we can help get to that day sooner is keeping the infections down, and the other one is getting more people vaccinated, and especially our kids."

Hochul pointed to the fact that the statewide COVID positivity rate has dropped from 23% at the beginning of January to 6.9% Sunday.

"Just literally earlier this month, we had a 23% statewide infection rate. And now, that infection rate is down to about 6.9%," she said. "Extraordinary drops, still much higher than we were in early December or November before omicron hit, so we're watching in comparison to what we've been in the fall. So we're getting there, and this, is people needed just need to hang on."

Hochul also expressed concern over lagging vaccination rates statewide, saying she believes that vaccinations has plateaued.

"I don't know what the hesitation is because we're not through this yet. It is not over,” she said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data cited by the governor, 95% of all New Yorkers age 18 and older have received at least one vaccine dose and 84.5% have completed their vaccine series. For New Yorkers of all ages, 87.4% have received at least one dose and 74% have completed their vaccine series.

Over the past 24 hours, 72,779 vaccine doses were administered and 421,998 shots were given out in the past seven days.