Here’s what you need to know:
- A jump in testing finds a spike in new cases.
- Governor orders businesses to keep 75 percent of their workers home.
- Elon Musk offers ventilators. New York says yes please.
- Three people from one New Jersey family were killed by the virus.
- Harvard analysis details how New York’s health system could be overwhelmed.
A jump in testing finds a spike in new cases.
A few days ago, New York State was testing only a few hundred people a day for coronavirus.
Last night, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said, the state processed the tests of 7,584 people.
Testing has ramped up as dozen of private laboratories in the state have been authorized to test for the virus. Two government-run labs had shouldered most of the state’s testing until recently.
The huge increase in testing capacity and the quickening spread of the virus yielded sobering news: more than 1,700 newly discovered cases in New York State.
The total as of Thursday morning stood at 4,152 cases statewide, up from 2,382 cases on Wednesday. There were 777 people hospitalized statewide. At least 29 people have died of the virus in New York State.
Since Monday, the case count in New York State has more than quadrupled. The addition of two drive-through testing centers has helped the state’s testing capacity. The first opened last Friday in New Rochelle, the state’s original virus hotspot, and a second opened Tuesday in Jones Beach State Park on Long Island.
In New York City, there were 2,469 cases as of Thursday, a one-day jump of nearly a thousand. Nineteen people in the city have died.
In New Jersey, the governor’s office said on Thursday that another 318 people had tested positive for the virus, raising the total to 742. Nine people have died in the state, up from five on Wednesday.
New Jersey also put in place tighter restrictions on businesses: All nail salons, tattoo parlors, barber shops and hair salons must close by 8 p.m. tonight, Gov. Phil Murphy said.
Connecticut officials announced the state’s first death from the virus, of a man in his 80s.
Governor orders businesses to keep 75 percent of their workers home.
With the virus continuing to surge and its economic fallout crippling the state, Mr. Cuomo ordered nonessential businesses to keep at least 75 percent of their work force at home, up from the 50 percent rule announced yesterday.
“It’s a very negative circumstance, but you’re going to have time on your hands,” the governor said at a Thursday morning briefing in Albany. “You’re going to have time with your family. You’re going to have time at home in this busy hurry-up world.”
He also announced an order waiving mortgage payments for three months for homeowners who face hardship.
“If you are not working, if you are working only part time, we are going to have the banks and financial institutions waive mortgage payments for 90 days,” Mr. Cuomo said.
“That will be a real economic benefit. It will also be a stress reliever for many families.”
The governor also sought to clarify his stance on a potential shelter-in-place measure, which Mayor Bill de Blasio has said might be imminent in New York City.
The issue has devolved into a semantic debate: The governor has said he supports the trappings of the shelter-in-place order in San Francisco — which still allows people to exercise and go out to buy groceries or medicine — but not the term itself.
“‘Shelter in place’ is a scary term for people, especially when they don’t know what it means,” he said, adding that the term evoked active shooters and nuclear war. “I believe communication is important, and I believe words are important. Say what you mean and don’t say what might alarm people.”
Mr. Cuomo’s 22-year-old daughter, Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, joined her father during the news conference to urge young people to take the outbreak seriously and practice social distancing.
“These pictures of people on beaches, these videos of young people saying, ‘This is my spring break, I’m out to party,’ ” the governor said. “This is so unintelligent and reckless. I can’t even begin to express it.”
The governor urged young people to not be stubborn and weigh the “risk-reward” of gathering in crowds, conceding, “I can order a quarantine of 10,000 people, but I can’t order my daughter to do anything.”
Elon Musk offers ventilators. New York says yes please.
Mr. Cuomo also addressed the state’s looming shortage of ventilators. He said the state had between 5,000 and 6,000 on hand, thousands short of the number hospitals may need in just a few weeks.
Amid a nationwide shortage of ventilators, the governor called on the federal government to help states procure the devices, which are crucial to helping the sickest patients breathe.
“We’re shopping for ventilators,” he said. “We literally have people in China shopping for ventilators.”
But Mayor de Blasio, earlier in the day, had a less orthodox idea.
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who runs Tesla and SpaceX, offered to manufacture ventilators if there is a shortage — and Mr. de Blasio said he would take them.
In a Twitter exchange with the journalist Nate Silver, Mr. Musk said “Tesla makes cars with sophisticated HVAC systems. SpaceX makes spacecraft with life support systems. Ventilators are not difficult, but cannot be produced instantly.”
He asked which hospitals had ventilator shortages.
“New York City is buying!” Mr. de Blasio tweeted to Mr. Musk. “Our country is facing a drastic shortage and we need ventilators ASAP — we will need thousands in this city over the next few weeks. We’re getting them as fast as we can but we could use your help! We’re reaching out to you directly.”
Three people from one New Jersey family were killed by the virus.
The first to die was Grace Fusco’s daughter Rita, last Friday. Then came her eldest son, Carmine, just yesterday.
Hours later, last night, Ms. Fusco, mother of 11, grandmother of 27, matriarch of a sprawling family in central New Jersey, died from the coronavirus at age 87 at her home in Freehold — unaware that it had taken two of her children.
Four of Ms. Fusco’s other children who contracted the virus are hospitalized, three of them in critical condition, a relative said.
Nearly 20 other relatives are isolated at their homes.
“If they’re not on a respirator, they’re quarantined,” said the relative, Roseann Paradiso Fodera. “It is so pitiful. They can’t even mourn the way you would.”
The virus’s toll on the Fusco family accounts for three of the five deaths in the state.
Harvard analysis details how New York’s health system could be overwhelmed.
Estimated peak
hospitalizations
14,800
total beds
in Manhattan
hospital region
3,100
unoccupied
beds
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
MONTHS
MONTHS
MONTHS
If 20% of adults are infected
If 40% of adults are infected
If 60% of adults are infected
Estimated peak
hospitalizations
14,800
total beds
in Manhattan
hospital region
3,100
unoccupied
beds
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
MONTHS
MONTHS
MONTHS
If 20% of adults are infected
If 40% of adults are infected
If 60% of adults are infected
Estimated peak
hospitalizations
14,800
total beds
in Manhattan
hospital region
3,100
unoccupied
beds
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
MONTHS
MONTHS
MONTHS
If 20% of adults
are infected
If 40% of adults
are infected
If 60% of adults
are infected
Estimated peak
hospitalizations
14,800
total beds
in Manhattan
hospital region
3,100
unoccupied
beds
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
0
3
6
12
18
MONTHS
MONTHS
MONTHS
If 20% of adults
are infected
If 40% of adults
are infected
If 60% of adults
are infected
On Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo said that cases of the new coronavirus in New York City would peak in the next 45 days.
If that happens, the number of patients requiring hospital care would substantially outstrip the available supply of beds, according to a Harvard analysis.
Researchers considered three scenarios for an outbreak of that duration in the city, assuming that cases ramp down as quickly as they peak.
In the “moderate projection” — in which a staggering 40 percent of the city’s adults fall sick over the next three months — making room for all the patients requiring hospital care would mean emptying or adding more than three times the number of beds typically occupied in the city’s largest hospital “referral region.”
That is an area that includes most parts of the city outside the Bronx.
The projected shortfall is even more dramatic for patients who need critical care. To meet the projected need, city hospitals would have to either empty or add more than 11 times the number of intensive-care beds that are currently occupied.
Cases spike in Hasidic neighborhoods.
On Wednesday, city health officials expressed alarm that the virus was spreading quickly in two of Brooklyn’s tightly knit Hasidic neighborhoods, citing a spike in confirmed cases in recent days.
More than 100 people tested positive for the virus at urgent care centers in Borough Park and Williamsburg.
The state’s health commissioner, Howard Zucker, said his office was aware of the high number of cases in Borough Park and was investigating it as a possible cluster — an interconnected group of cases traceable to one source. Such a group emerged in New Rochelle this month.
A volunteer bike brigade grows in Brooklyn.
On Friday, Liz Baldwin, a librarian at the New York Public Library, was told that she wouldn’t be coming to work for at least two weeks.
She did not think long about what to do next — recently, a friend in China had told her about the bicycle and scooter couriers of Wuhan who keep a locked-down city supplied and fed.
“I thought, you know, I can do that,” Ms. Baldwin said.
She posted on Instagram and Twitter asking if anyone might be willing to help. They were.
On Wednesday morning, Corona Couriers counted more than 30 volunteers; by the end of the day, that number had exceeded 50.
Courier groups are sprouting up in dense communities around the country. An operational Slack room is used to coordinate riders, many of whom have a background in social work and volunteering.
Among members, there is extensive discussion about “what it means to have a no-contact service,” Ms. Baldwin said.
The couriers work for free, asking only for the cost of what’s delivered. “This is a mutual aid project,” Ms. Baldwin said.
The city seeks to free some inmates.
Many inmates in New York City’s jail system with medical problems could be released in the coming days in a bid to stem the coronavirus from spreading, Mayor de Blasio said Wednesday.
In an interview on WCBS radio, Mr. de Blasio said that inmates being held on “minor” charges might also be released. The city has about 5,400 inmates in custody.
The push to identify inmates who could be released came as city officials announced that a person in custody at the sprawling Rikers Island jail complex was infected, raising fears that the virus could circulate in its close quarters.
The mayor’s office is working with the city’s five district attorneys on the plan, which could involve the release of inmates who are over 50 and have health problems, according to city officials.
Officials with the district attorneys’ offices are trying to identify inmates considered safe to be released and those who are not, according to two people briefed on the plan.
The city could release inmates who are being held on parole violations, the people said, although doing so would require the state Board of Parole’s approval. Judges might also have to sign off on the release of some inmates.
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Jonah Engel Bromwich, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Alan Feuer, Michael Gold, Christina Goldbaum, Matthew Haag, John Herrman, Corey Kilgannon, John Leland, Jesse McKinley, Andy Newman, Sarah Maslin Nir, Azi Paybarah, Jan Ransom, Margot Sanger-Katz, Nate Schweber, Liam Stack, Tracey Tully, Alex Vadukul and Michael Wilson contributed reporting.
The state was testing just 200 people a day a few days ago.
