Cuomo: State May Be Near Peak in COVID-19 Battle; Deaths Eclipse 4,100
Gov. Andrew Cuomo provided a glimmer of hope in New York’s fight against the coronavirus Sunday by suggesting that the state may be at or near its peak even as deaths jumped to more than 4,100.
Cuomo said that while health experts won’t know for certain whether the state has reached the apex for several days, he provided a few encouraging trends. Saturday’s death toll of 592 was down from 630 on Friday and the number of new hospitalizations from COVID-19 on Saturday fell to 574. By comparison, new hospitalizations had topped 1,000 for each of the seven previous days and for nine of the last 10 days.
While the number of current hospitalized patients from the disease has risen to 16,479 statewide, the discharge of patients has risen to 12,187.
“We’re looking at this seriously now because looking at the data we may be very near the apex or the apex could be a plateau and we could be on that plateau right now,” Cuomo said. “We don’t know until we see the next few days. Does it go up? Does it go down?”
There have been 4,159 New Yorkers who have died from COVID-19.
“We pray for each and every one of them and their families, and that is up and that is the worst news,” Cuomo said. “But the number of deaths over the past few days has been dropping for the first time. What is the significance to that? It’s too early to tell.”
Despite the possibility of the peak nearing, he warned that the healthcare system remains under duress and once again pledged to shift equipment and resources around the state as needed. An area of concern in addition to New York City is the proliferation of cases on Long Island. Nassau County, with 14,398 cases on Sunday, passed Westchester (13,723) with the second most cases in the state behind New York City.
Suffolk County also saw a spike in cases to 12,405, which makes the two Long Island counties account for 22 percent of the state’s cases, with New York City leveling off at 65 percent and Westchester and Rockland counties combining for 7 percent of New York State’s cases.
Cuomo said he has daily conference calls with hospital administrators around the state to share resources for the areas where it is most needed.
“This is putting a tremendous amount of stress on the healthcare system,” Cuomo said. “You are asking a system to do more than it’s ever done before, more than it was designed to do, with less.”
Typically, hospitals have a two- to three-month supply of basic equipment such as gloves, gowns and surgical masks, but in many cases those supplies have dwindled to a few days. Some hospitals are down to two or three spare ventilators, the governor said.
On Saturday, Cuomo said that a shipment of 1,000 ventilators was scheduled to arrive at John F. Kennedy Airport, which had been procured from China by New York, and that Oregon Gov. Kate Brown was loaning 140 of her state’s ventilators to New York to help it through the crisis period. He vowed that once New York is out of danger, the state will ship its excess equipment to other hotspots around the nation.
A return to normalcy can only begin when the rapid testing program will be brought to scale, Cuomo said.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/