Congestion hits Port of New York and New Jersey amid COVID-19 spike

The Port of New York and New Jersey have been hit with congestion due to a spike in the number of port workers in quarantine for COVID-19.

“We have seen a spike in the number of labor going out into quarantine,” Port of New York and New Jersey Authority Director Sam Ruda, told Bloomberg in an interview.

According to the port authority’s website average waiting time for containerships at the port had increased to 4.75 days in the last week of 2021 compared 1.6 days as an average for the year. The number of longshoremen unavailable for work was reported to be running at about 350 per day.

As of 7 January, the port authority said 11 containerships were currently at anchor waiting to call its terminals. Two of the vessels had been waiting since 1 January.

The port has a seen a significant growth in volumes over the pre-pandemic year of 2019 within handling 8.12 million TEU by the end of November 2021, compared to 7.47 million TEU for the whole of 2019.

Compared to US west coast gateway ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the east coast port was largely unaffected by delays and congestion last year.

In addition to COVID-19 related worker quarantines last week, the port also saw disruption to operations from heavy snowstorms.