Deaths level off in New York amid hope that cases are ‘plateauing’

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People wear face masks in New York earlier this month
AFP via Getty Images
Michael Howie7 April 2020

New York's coronavirus outbreak could be “plateauing”, its governor has said, as hospital admissions in America’s biggest Covid-19 hotspot fell and deaths levelled off for a second day.

Andrew Cuomo said state-wide fatalities were up 599 from Sunday, similar to the 594 recorded during the previous 24 hours and below Friday’s figure of 630. The state’s overall number of confirmed cases grew by seven per cent from the previous day to 130,680. But hospitalisations, admissions to intensive care units and the number of patients put on ventilators had all declined, Mr Cuomo said.

“While none of this is good news, the possible flattening of the curve is better than the increases that we have seen,” he said at his daily briefing. “If we are plateauing, we are plateauing at a high level.” For doctors, nurses and emergency personnel — many still coping with scarcities of protective garments and other supplies — the pace of their work remained unrelenting.

“Yesterday, I worked 16 hours and I had 13 cardiac arrests, and that’s a lot of death,” said fire department paramedic Anthony Almojera. New York City accounts for two thirds of nearly 4,800 deaths in the state, which in turn represents nearly half of the country’s near-11,000 fatalities to date.

In neighbouring New Jersey, the state with the second-highest number of cases and deaths, Governor Phil Murphy cited a 12 per cent day-to-day growth rate in confirmed positive cases yesterday, half the rate from March 30.

“Our efforts to flatten the curve are starting to pay off,” he said.

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