Another 562 people have died of the coronavirus in New York, as the state’s health crisis deepens. Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared people “are going to die in the near term” due to lack of beds and ventilators in hospitals.
The jump in deaths since Thursday brought New York’s total Covid-19 fatalities to just under 3,000 – just under half of the US’ total of 6,558.
“New York is in crisis, help New York,” Cuomo pleaded, calling on the federal government to deploy resources from elsewhere to help the virus-stricken state.
President Donald Trump has deployed a US Navy hospital ship to New York City, and the Army Corps of Engineers has already set up field hospitals in the city. Even so, Cuomo said that his state is in dire straits.
“Hospitals have now turned into effectively ICU hospitals for Covid-19 patients,” he said.
Though Cuomo pleaded with both the federal government and neighboring states to deploy resources to New York, the governor has not yet issued a state-wide quarantine. Cuomo rejected a quarantine plan proposed by Trump last week, claiming that such a plan would be “counterproductive” and “un-American,” before Trump abandoned the idea.
With the death toll rising, New York’s hospitals aren’t the only facilities running out of space. Morgues in the Big Apple are nearing capacity, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has ordered 85 refrigerated trucks and 100,000 body bags from the Pentagon to handle the demand, an ABC News report on Thursday revealed.
Confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New York jumped to more than 100,000 on Friday too, from 92,000 a day earlier.
Header: Healthcare workers wheel a patient into the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., April 2, 2020. © REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid