New York: New York suffered another day of record fatalities from the coronavirus outbreak and may be poised to endure many more, as a wave of patients who hit the hospital system two weeks ago begin to succumb to its effects. Governor Andrew Cuomo reported 779 additional deaths in his daily briefing on Wednesday, the second consecutive day of record fatalities.
The state has lost more than 1,500 people to the virus in the last two days, for a total of almost 6,300 — more than double the number of lives lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he pointed out. Cuomo said he would direct the state to fly flags at half-mast in remembrance of the victims. The bad news isn’t just bad, the bad news is terrible,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany.
The number of deaths will continue to rise as those hospitalized for a period of time pass away. More than half of the deaths were in New York City, where officials have been discussing plans to temporarily bury the dead in a potter’s field on Hart Island in the Bronx, which has served as a mass grave for New York’s unknown, poor and homeless dead for more than a century. The trend in New York was echoed in neigh boring New Jersey, home to a sizable share of New York’s workforce, which also reported a second consecutive record day of fatalities.
The state has lost more than 1,500 people to the outbreak, including 275 in the last day, Governor Phil Murphy said. The grim prospect of a week or more of surging virus fatalities contrasted with other data showing that New York is beginning to turn a corner in combating the virus.
Net new hospitalizations have dropped to an average of about 550 a day for the last four days, after peaking at roughly 1,400 on April 2 Cuomo said those figures are evidence that the state’s near-total lockdown and social-distancing rules are working. It is flattening the curve, and we see that again today so far, he said, adding that we have to remain diligent, we have to remain disciplined going forward. Still, the state’s number of new infections ticked up above 10,000 again, after three days of fewer than 9,000. Almost 150,000 New Yorkers have tested positive, with more than 80,000 of them in New York City.
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