The coronavirus is far from finished. But in New York, both the city and the state, there’s a thin ray of hope that the worst just might be over.
So says Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who reported Monday that almost 600 new Covid-19 patients died statewide in the previous 24 hours.
It was the state’s second-highest one-day death toll since the outbreak began — yet, Cuomo told a news conference, there are finally indications that the infection rate is beginning to decline.
“For days, officials in New York have been searching for signs that the coronavirus is nearing a peak in the state — which has experienced by far the worst outbreak in the country — and will start to ebb,” reports the New York Times.
Cuomo reported that more than 130,689 people across New York state have tested positive for the virus; nearly 17,000 are hospitalized, and there have been 4,758 deaths, up from 4,159 on Sunday.
Those numbers, Cuomo added, “would suggest a possible flattening of the curve.”
Still, the news isn’t all good.
“If we are plateauing, we are plateauing at a very high level,” Cuomo said, “and there is tremendous stress on the health care system.”
“Even if the curve of infection is slowing, the virus’s daily toll remains horrific,” the Times says.
“New York City reported a one-day total of 351 deaths on Sunday morning. On a normal day … 158 people die, so more than twice as many people in the city are dying of the virus than of all other causes combined.”
Mark Levine, chairman of the City Council’s health committee, reported that officials are considering a drastic move: temporarily burying the dead in a public park.
“It will be done in a dignified, orderly — and temporary — manner,” Levine wrote on Twitter. “But it will be tough for NYers to take.”
Levine later back-pedaled somewhat.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio says that for now, at least, such burials won’t happen.
New Yorkers are worried — about the virus, about finding and affording food, paying rent — but by and large they’re complying with efforts to slow the spread of the disease, like social distancing and self-quarantining. That’s at least partly because the state fines those who fail to social distance; Cuomo doubled the maxiumum fine Monday, from $500 to $1,000.
“One of the reasons the rate of infection is going down is because social distancing is working,” Cuomo said. “We have to continue the social distancing.”
He also warned against being “over-confident,” adding other places have done so, to their regret — “and we’re not going to make that mistake.”
In one striking side-note to all the human misery, it appears that the coronavirus, which reputedly jumped to people from wild animals in China, is now making the jump back: a tiger at the Bronx Zoo has come down with Covid-19, and other big cats are showing symptoms.
