New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday said the state could be past the “plateau” in the coronavirus outbreak and on its way downward amid a drop in total hospitalizations and intubations.
“If you look at the past three days, you could argue that we are past the plateau and we’re starting to descend, which would be very good news,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily briefing on the COVID-19 outbreak in his state.
Mr. Cuomo also cautioned, however, that “happy days are not here again” because there are still roughly 2,000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations every day.
“We’re not at the plateau anymore, but we’re still not in a good position,” he said.
He also reported 540 new coronavirus-related deaths. That number was notably down from the daily numbers over the last week or so, though Mr. Cuomo has cautioned against reading too much into a single day’s worth of data.
More than 12,000 people have died from the coronavirus in New York, which has more than 236,000 positive cases. Both totals are more than any other state in the country.
Mr. Cuomo again said the state needs more federal help if it’s going to scale testing to the point where it can reopen the economy.
“We’re not at a point where we’re going to be reopening anything immediately, but we are planning,” he said.
The governor recently extended the closing of non-essential businesses and other “stay at home” restrictions until at least May 15.
There have been more than 596,000 people tested out of a population of close to 20 million people in the state, but Mr. Cuomo said it’s not enough.
“There are not enough tests being performed on any group anywhere in the state, OK?” he said. “Not for prisoners, not for the black and brown population, not for health care workers, not for police officers - that’s true across the board. That’s why we have to bring testing to scale across the board.”
There have been more than 573,000 people tested out of a population of close to 20 million people in the state.
There are now more than 700,000 coronavirus cases in the U.S. and more than 37,000 deaths, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University. It’s estimated that there have been more than 3.5 million tests in the U.S.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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