New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday said the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City might not hit until May.
“The worst is certainly in the next few weeks, minimum,” Mr. de Blasio said on NBC’s “Today” program. “I could see it going into May, in fact, with the numbers we’re looking at.”
New York City is at the epicenter of the crisis, with more than 37,400 positive coronavirus cases and more than 900 coronavirus-related deaths, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University and the state health department.
President Trump on Sunday said the peak death rate in the U.S. won’t come until mid-April as he announced an extension of federal social distancing guidelines until April 30.
Mr. de Blasio said all of the approximately 20,000 hospital beds New York City might need to transition to intensive care unit beds to treat COVID-19 patients.
“You have to plan for the worst,” he said. “The projection has it getting worse over the next few weeks, potentially extending well into May, and will require a level of hospital capacity we’ve never seen, we’ve never even conceived of.”
New York did get a boost on Monday with the arrival of the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship with approximately 1,000 beds that will be used to free up space in other hospitals for COVID-19 patients.
The much-touted arrival of the ship also caused people to flock to get a glimpse, which Mr. de Blasio called “unacceptable.”
“Look, we all feel a lot emotionally about the arrival of the Comfort — it’s giving us so much hope that our military is here,” he said. “But in the meantime, as much as we love the Comfort … people must practice social distancing.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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