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Hospitalizations for Coronavirus Are Nearly Flat in N.Y., but 799 More Die

Despite mounting death tolls, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut all cited data that gave them cause for optimism.

[This briefing has ended. For the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak in the New York area, read Friday’s live coverage.]

Cases and deaths in New York

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10,000 cases
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Total reported On May 25 14-day change
Cases 2 million 945 –45%
Deaths 52,638 17 –45%
Hospitalized 1,890 –29%

Day with reporting anomaly.

Hospitalization data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 14-day change trends use 7-day averages.

See maps of the coronavirus outbreak in New York »

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Wheeling a body to a refrigerator truck at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn on Thursday.Credit...Stephanie Keith for The New York Times

As it has for several days, the story of the coronavirus in New York had two strands on Thursday: encouraging progress and devastating loss of life, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said.

In the past two weeks, the number of virus patients hospitalized has grown more and more slowly, from over 20 percent a day at one point to single-digit percent increases this week.

From Wednesday to Thursday, the number increased by 200, to 18,279, or just 1 percent.

If the trend were to continue, the number of people in hospitals would soon start to decline — a sign that the virus had passed its apex.

But the number of people dying of the virus continues to grow. The state recorded 799 deaths from Wednesday to Thursday, another one-day high.

For the second straight day, Mr. Cuomo compared the toll of the virus to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, calling the virus a “silent explosion that ripples through society with the same randomness, the same evil that we saw on 9/11.”

As he has done repeatedly in recent days, Mr. Cuomo stressed that social distancing and other restrictions would continue to be enforced, because they were necessary to maintain the progress the state has made.

He also cautioned that New York might only be in the first wave of the pandemic. The state would probably have enough hospital beds and ventilators to treat virus patients if current trends hold, he said, but its resources would be insufficient if the most drastic projections about the outbreak were realized.

“Everybody is assuming, well, once we get through this, we’re done,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that. This virus has been ahead of us from day one.

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transcript

‘We Didn’t Lose Anyone That We Could Have Saved,’ Cuomo Says

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York provided the state’s latest stats on the spread of coronavirus, and addressed the latest increase in deaths.

I tell my daughters every day, it’s only 18 days since everything closed down. It’s 39 days since the first Covid case in New York — feels like a lifetime. It’s 80 days since we had the first Covid case in the United States — 80 days. Been an intense, life-changing 80 days. But that’s what it has been. And we are flattening the curve. We had 200 net increase in hospitalizations, which you can see is the lowest number we’ve had since this nightmare started, actually. A change in I.C.U. admissions is the lowest number we’ve had since March 19 or so. I understand the scientific concept. I understand the data, but you’re talking about 799 lives, the highest number ever. Today we can say that we have lost many of our brothers and sisters, but we haven’t lost anyone because they didn’t get the right and best health care that they could. The way I sleep at night is I believe that we didn’t lose anyone that we could have saved, and that is the only solace when I look at these numbers and look at this pain that’s been created — that has to be true, and that has to continue. And that is a function of what each and every one of us does.

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Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York provided the state’s latest stats on the spread of coronavirus, and addressed the latest increase in deaths.CreditCredit...Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

The governor again emphasized that New York’s black and Hispanic communities were being hit the hardest by the virus, and he said that additional testing sites would be opened in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.

Here are the latest statistics from the governor’s morning briefing.

  • Deaths in New York State: 799 since yesterday, for a new total of 7,067.

  • Confirmed cases: 159,937 statewide, up 10,621 from 149,316, a 7 percent increase. In New York City: 87,028, up from 81,803.

  • People hospitalized: 18,279 statewide, up by 200 from 18,079 Wednesday, an increase of 1 percent.

  • In intensive care: 4,925, up 84 from 4,841 on Wednesday, a 2 percent increase.

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Outside Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on Wednesday,Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey cited progress in the fight against the virus on Thursday even as he reported that another 198 people in the state had died.

The number of virus patients on ventilators dropped almost 2 percent, to 1,551 from 1,576, from Wednesday to Thursday, an indicator that the curve of infection was flattening.

The death toll was New Jersey’s smallest in three days, although it was still the fourth highest since the outbreak began. More people have died in New Jersey, 1,700, than in any other state besides New York.

Mr. Murphy also said the rate at which the number of confirmed virus cases was doubling in each of the state’s counties was beginning to slow.

“This is progress,” he said, showing a county-by-county map of new cases. “Our social distancing is in fact beginning to show effect here.”

The governor announced 3,748 new cases, pushing the total number in the state to 51,027. He said that as the number of new cases continued to rise, people had to keep following the order to stay at home and to wear masks when going to the grocery store.

“We have got to get to a plateau,” he said. “This is not a time for selfishness.”

Nearly 480 people were discharged from hospitals from Wednesday to Thursday, he said, including James Pruden, an emergency room doctor who contracted the virus in late March.

Mr. Murphy also announced new grace periods for people who had lost their jobs and could not pay their insurance premiums: 60 days for people unable to pay health and dental premiums and 90 days for those unable to pay home, auto, renter’s and life insurance premiums.

Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut, like his counterparts in New York and New Jersey, said there has been a relatively modest net gain in virus-related hospitalizations from Wednesday to Thursday. He called the data “good news” and a sign that “we may be reaching peak.”

Mr. Lamont reported that another 45 people had died of the virus — a one-day increase similar to those earlier in the week — but he spent more time focused on the increase of just 46 hospitalizations statewide since Wednesday.

Fairfield County, the area of Connecticut to be hit hardest by the pandemic and where the virus was first detected in the state, had experienced a slight decrease in new hospitalizations from Wednesday to Thursday, he added.

Mr. Lamont nonetheless cautioned that “one day does not a trend make.” Still, he said he hoped that the figures on Thursday might portend positive developments in the future.

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The release of about 400 parole violators from the Rikers Island jail complex has moved slowly, critics said.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Last summer, Raymond Rivera was arrested on a minor parole violation and sent to Rikers Island, where he waited months for a final decision on his release. As his case dragged on, the coronavirus spread through the jail complex and he became sick.

On Friday, state parole officials finally lifted the warrant against Mr. Rivera as he lay in a bed at the Bellevue Hospital Center. He died the next day.

“It was a tragedy the way it happened,” said Mr. Rivera’s wife, who asked not to be named to protect her privacy. “Why did he have to wait so long?”

Nearly two weeks ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo promised to release about 400 people who were on Rikers Island for minor parole violations as part of an effort to reduce the impact of the coronavirus in the city’s crowded jail complex.

“We’re releasing people who are in jails because they violated parole for nonserious reasons,” Mr. Cuomo said in a television interview on March 27. “And wherever we can get people out of jails, out of prisons, now we are.”

But carrying out that order has proved difficult, defense lawyers say. The state parole system has largely ground to a halt because of the pandemic, leaving hundreds of people in limbo, including those like Mr. Rivera who were detained on technical violations. So far 195 parole violators have been released from New York City jails, city officials say.

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A New York City bus driver at work this week. Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees New York City’s subway and buses and two commuter railroads, said on Thursday that it had begun deploying medically trained teams to check transit workers’ temperatures when they arrive at work.

The move is meant to help the authority prevent the coronavirus from spreading further among its 74,000-person work force and keep the mass transit system from plunging deeper into a pandemic-fueled crisis it will have to overcome for the city’s economy to rebound.

As of Wednesday, at least 41 transit workers had died of the virus, around 1,500 had tested positive and another 5,600 were self-quarantined after showing signs of being infected.

The resulting crew shortages had caused over 800 subway delays on an already reduced schedule and had forced 40 percent of train trips to be canceled in a single day.

The temperature-taking teams have so far tested around 2,000 employees a day at 22 sites and had found that about one in every 1,000 had a fever, officials said.

“One of the best ways to reduce the spread of Covid-19 is to ensure that people who are sick are staying home, out of the transit system and away from work,” Patrick Warren, the authority’s chief safety officer, said in a statement. “Our ‘temperature brigade’ helps reduce risk for everyone.”

Tony Utano, the president of Transit Workers Union Local 100 said in statement that the move was “a step in the right direction to control this virus, and they should look to expand it.”

Nearly 120 morgue workers and soldiers are working around the clock to retrieve the bodies of up to 280 people a day who are dying at home in New York City, many of them probably having succumbed to the coronavirus without being counted in the official death toll.

The chief medical examiner’s office is overseeing the grisly task, with the help of more than 100 soldiers from the U.S. Army, the National Guard and the Air National Guard, officials said. Many of those involved in the operation have special training in processing human remains.

Fifteen four-person teams are working during each 12-hour shift, driving mostly rented vans, said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.

Fire Department data shows that 1,125 patients were pronounced dead in their homes or on the street in the first five days of April, more than eight times the 131 deaths recorded during the same period last year.

Paramedics are not testing those they pronounce dead for the virus so it is almost impossible to say how many of the people were infected with it. Some may have been tested before they died and either were not admitted to hospitals or were sent home.

But the discrepancy between the number of people dying at home this year at the height of the epidemic compared with the number of those who died under such circumstances last year suggests the virus was involved in many of the recent deaths.

“The driver of this huge uptick in deaths at home is Covid-19,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday. “And some people are dying directly of it, and some people are dying indirectly of it, but it is the tragic ‘X’ factor here.”

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Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Traffic at New York City’s busiest bridges and tunnels has plunged nearly 60 percent.

Rush-hour speeds have soared 288 percent on one of the city’s most clogged arteries, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, to 52 miles per hour from 13 m.p.h.

Even the air is cleaner, with levels of particulate matter, which contribute to health problems like lung cancer and heart attacks, plunging as much as 35 percent across the city.

The coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged New York has essentially erased much of the traffic in the country’s largest city, easing the congestion that has strangled the streets and has made it more perilous for pedestrians and a growing army of bicycle commuters.

And it has happened far more swiftly and drastically than any measure New York’s leaders have taken so far to push cars off the streets.

In one measure of declining road use, the average number of miles traveled in 24 hours by vehicles in the New York metro region, which includes parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, had plunged 64 percent by April 2, according to INRIX, a transportation analytics company.

Also, buses moved faster with fewer cars in the way. The average weekday bus speed rose 7 percent to 8.7 miles per hour from 8.1 miles per hour before the outbreak, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

There is at least one down side to clearer streets, however: speeding. Despite far fewer vehicles on the road, automated speed cameras issued 24,765 speeding tickets citywide on March 27, nearly double the 12,672 tickets issued daily a month earlier, according to city data.

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Waiting outside a supermarket in Jackson Heights this week. Credit...Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

Black and Hispanic people in New York City are about twice as likely to die of the virus as white people are, according to preliminary data released on Wednesday by the city.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said early Wednesday that the disparities reflected economic inequity and differences in access to health care.

Mr. de Blasio and Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the city’s health commissioner, stressed that some of the city’s Hispanic residents might have been discouraged from seeking medical care by the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has dominated the national discourse in recent years.

“The overlay of the anti-immigrant rhetoric across this country, I think, has real implications in the health of our community,” she said.

Mr. Cuomo said on Wednesday that the differences could be partly attributed to some groups having more untreated chronic health problems than others, making them more likely to die of the virus. But he also said that black and Hispanic people might also be disproportionately represented in the ranks of workers whose jobs on the front lines put them at risk.

Elizabeth, N.J., which had reported 1,688 coronavirus cases and 45 deaths as of Thursday, is now enforcing social-distancing rules from above.

This week, the Elizabeth police deployed five drones equipped with audio capability. The devices hover over residents who are standing too close together while an automated message from Mayor Chris Bollwage admonishes them to “move away from each other” or face fines of up to $1,000 for failing to keep at least six feet apart from others.

The drones were donated to Elizabeth by D.J.I., a manufacturer in China that has provided a total of around 100 of the devices to 43 public safety agencies in the United States for what the company said was assistance in enforcing social-distancing efforts regulations.

Mr. Bollwage said the drones, which operate during the daytime, were being used mostly in areas like courtyards and along river trails that police vehicles had trouble getting to.

He said he had received some complaints about the devices, including one resident who complained that the city was employing “communistic tactics.”

“I’m not swooping down with the drones and taking pictures, or hovering over windows, or leaving summonses by airmail,” Mr. Bollwage said. “I’m just warning people that congregating is extremely dangerous.”

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A nurse from Florida boarded a bus to take her from a Midtown hotel to Coney Island Hospital Center on Thursday. Credit...Stephanie Keith for The New York Times

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday that even as New Yorkers could probably expect to remain under heavy restrictions through May, he and other officials have started to envision a return to normalcy.

His remarks contrasted sharply with those of the governor, who questioned whether officials could accurately predict the spread of a virus that experts did not fully understand.

“I’m not going to guess when the data will say we should change our practices,” Mr. Cuomo said.

“Who can look forward and say ‘This is where we’re going to be in three or four or five weeks’,” he said.

The mayor said he thought that as soon as mid-May, the city could move to the next stage in the epidemic, where the virus was spreading at a low level that allowed cases to be traced more easily.

“We can say that it’s time to start planning for the next phase very overtly,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference.

He emphasized, though, that any such a transition would require the availability of widespread testing to a degree that was not yet available.

“We need a whole lot of testing,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We need the federal government to step up, we need them to do it quickly.”

Still, Mr. de Blasio’s remarks reflected the cautious optimism that other officials have expressed in recent days as hospitalizations seemed to slow.

The mayor, echoing Mr. Cuomo, said that any move toward loosening social-distancing guidelines would require New Yorkers to continue adhering to the existing rules for now.

The mayor was unwilling to discuss in detail what such a loosening might look like.

“In any scenario, we want to see the maximum number of people work at home for a long time,” he said.

The mayor also said the city would look for decreases in three key figures before relaxing social-distancing rules: the percentage of positive coronavirus tests, the numbers of people admitted to hospitals who were suspected to have the virus and the number admitted to intensive-care units who were suspected of being infected.

Reporting was contributed by Kevin Armstrong, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Annie Correal, Maria Cramer, Michael Gold, Christina Goldbaum, Matthew Haag, Winnie Hu, Jeffery C. Mays, Patrick McGeehan, Jesse McKinley, Andy Newman, Azi Paybarah, Jan Ransom, William K. Rashbaum, Matt Stevens and Michael Wilson.

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