NY Gov Gives Positive News from COVID-19 Epicenter: 'The Arrows Are Headed in the Right Direction'
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that the state’s current coronavirus hospitalization rate is “headed in the right direction.”
At the Democratic governor’s daily news briefing on COVID-19, Cuomo cited projections that hospitalizations would double every 4.7 days as compared to Sunday predictions that hospitalization would double every two days, according to The Hill.
Cuomo also said that social distancing efforts “may be working.”
“Now that is almost too good to be true,” he said, according to Intelligencer.
“This is a very good sign and a positive sign. I’m not 100 percent sure it holds or it’s accurate, but the arrows are headed in the right direction and that is always better than the arrows headed in the wrong direction.”
New York has become a U.S. epicenter for the coronavirus with its case count doubling every three days, The New York Times reported.
“We haven’t flattened the curve. And the curve is actually increasing,” Cuomo said.
“The apex is higher than we thought, and the apex is sooner than we thought. That is a bad combination of facts.”
On Friday, Gov. Cuomo ordered all nonessential business workers to stay home and everyone else to practice social distancing, according to CNN.
The state will also enact “mandatory playground social density” to keep children safe, The Hill reported.
Following the stay-at-home order, Cuomo cited the slowing rate of infection in Westchester County during Wednesday’s conference.
“We have dramatically slowed what was an exponential rate of increase,” Cuomo said, according to The New York Times.
“That was the hottest cluster in the United States of America. We closed the schools, we closed gatherings, we brought in testing, and we have dramatically slowed the increase.”
He also highlighted efforts to procure more hospital beds and equipment, predicting the peak of people needing hospitalization is about 14-21 days away.
State officials have projected they will need 30,000 ventilators of which they currently only have 4,000, The Times reported.
Cuomo said that 7,000 more ventilators have been obtained and 4,000 have been sent by the federal government.
Cuomo also said that hospitals will need to increase their capacity by at least 50 percent, saying the state may eventually need 140,000 hospital beds, the Hill reported.
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