New York City has recorded 1664 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day, taking the total number to 3615.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the shocking statistic in a press conference held Thursday afternoon, with the official number soaring by over 1000 in the hours since state Governor Andrew Cuomo updated the public earlier in the morning.
He later told CNN that the city will run out of medical supplies in between two and three weeks if infections continue at the current rate.
New York City has requested 15,000 ventilators, three million N95 masks, 50 million surgical masks and 25 million gowns, gloves and coveralls.
‘I said very clearly that for the month of March, we have the supplies that we need, the city has very strong reserves of the kind of supplies that I talked about… [But] it is going into April that I’m worried about. I don’t have the perfect day for you, we’re assessing all the time but it is a day, two weeks from now or three weeks from now where we must, by then, have had a very substantial resupply.’
In his press conference de Blasio earlier stated: ‘We’re seeing an explosion of cases here in New York City,’ , adding that the numbers were ‘very, very painful’ to learn about.
The Mayor announced that 22 city residents have now died in relation to coronavirus, and 169 others remain in intensive care.
Chillingly, nearly half of all New York City residents who have tested positive to coronavirus are under the age of 50.
In his press conference, de Blasio also acknowledged that there was a ‘widespread community spread’ in all five boroughs – but acknowledged there was cluster of cases in Brooklyn, particularly in the Borough Park neighborhood.
More than 1000 cases have been confirmed in Brooklyn alone- up from the 157 that were recorded just 48 hours ago.
New York City now has more coronavirus cases than the entirety of the United Kingdom, which recorded 2626 cases as of Thursday evening.
New York City’s staggering numbers account for more than quarter of the 13, 572 cases in United States.
On Thursday evening, New York state has recorded a total of 4152 cases, and is by far the worst affected state in the entire country.
Washington, with 1026 confirmed coronavirus cases is the second worst affected.
New York City has recorded 1664 new cases of COVID-19 in a single day, taking the total number to 3615
Hospital personnel are pictured at a coronavirus screening tent outside the Brooklyn Hospital Center on Thursday
One New Yorker braved the subway on Thursday, despite the explosion in coronavirus cases
The usually bustling Chinatown neighborhood in Manhattan was nearly deserted Thursday
Mayor de Blasio also confirmed that an inmate at Rikers Island prison had tested positive for COVID-19, and several other prisoners were exhibiting symptoms.
City officials have been fearful of the highly contagious coronavirus spreading through its prison systems, meaning that guards and other jail staff could be severely affected.
Meanwhile on Thursday morning, state Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered 75 per cent of non essential workers to now stay at home. That was up from 50 per cent Wednesday.
Cuomo also announced mortgage payments would be waived for 90 days for those in financial difficulties.
Comparing the pandemic to September 11, 2001, when more than 3,000 people lost their lives in a terror attack, Cuomo said the coronavirus ‘came out of the blue’ and ‘changed your perspective on the world safety’.
Warning younger people to stay home, he added: ‘It’s a moment that changes your whole life. The stress, the emotion is just incredible and rightly so.
‘It reminds me of 9/11 where one moment which was inconceivable changed everything. It is hard living your life when there is a question mark that big. It’s not just you, it has changed everything.’
New Yorkers (pictured wearing a mask) have been told this week to prepare to hunker down in place as the city continues its fight against the coronavirus
A pedestrian walks on Wall St., as concerns about coronavirus disease (COVID-19) keep more people at home, in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday
There was no one at Time’s Square on Monday as people stayed at home and the city braced for shut down
‘The Sky is Falling’: NYC surgeon on the front lines warns ‘life will forever look different’
‘The sky is falling. I’m not afraid to say it,’ wrote Cornelia Griggs in an open letter to the New York Times. The opinion piece published this morning paints a grim picture for medical personnel that are fighting tirelessly to combat Covid-19.
‘Alarmist is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me before,’ said the New York City pediatric surgeon. ‘But this is different.’
Griggs, who trained in emergency room traumas and did rounds in intensive care units at Harvard hospitals, said: ‘Panic is not in my vocabulary; the emotion has been drilled out of me in nine years of training.’
Cornelia Griggs, a board certified surgeon in working in New York City’s largest hospital pens a warning letter in the New York Times about the bleak reality of the Coronavirus pandemic, she said: ‘We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations’
Her open letter to the New York Times reveals the sheer terror and uncertainty medical experts face in the fight to contain Coronavirus which has 2,469 confirmed cases in New York City alone (a dramatic increase from 1,339 cases yesterday).
It was only two weeks ago that Griggs’ children were having pizza parties and running though the hallways carefree with other resident children in her apartment complex.
Griggs wrote about a difficult conversation she shared with her neighbor Karen: ‘Look me in the eye,’ she recalled with a lump in her throat: ‘I make this personal promise to you – I will not let your children die from this disease.’
Statistically, Griggs said that she feels confident in her vow to Karen being that ‘children do not seem to be dying from Covid-19.’ It was a brief moment of levity in her open letter that acknowledges the bleak, deadly reality that has already claimed over 9,300 lives worldwide. She added: ‘There are others to whom I cannot make similar promises.’
‘We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations,’ she wrote in the New York Times piece.
Working from one of New York City’s largest hospitals trying to contain the rapidly spreading virus, Griggs said that there has been ‘movement to redeploy as many health care workers as possible to the E.R.s, new ‘fever clinics’ and I.C.U.s.’
She added that it’s become ‘an all-healthy-hands-on-deck scenario.’
‘The sky is falling,’ wrote Griggs. ‘A few weeks from now you may call me an alarmist; and I can live with that. Actually, I will keel over with happiness if I’m proven wrong.’
Griggs, (who works at one of New York City’s largest hospitals) wrote that supplies and personal protective equipment are ‘dwindling’ and doctors are ‘pessimistic’ about their ability to control a ‘surge’ in cases with only 4,000 beds and 750 ventilators
Though Griggs maintains that the current reality is indeed terrifying. She explains that doctors still do not have straightforward access to testing across the country. On top of that, the guidelines and criteria for testing are constantly in flux.
Supplies and personal protective equipment are ‘dwindling.’ Anti-viral treatments are still in the nascent stages of experimentation. The city is playing a numbers game with the amount of available hospital beds, ventilators and medical staff that are absorbing the surge in Coronavirus cases. ‘We are living in a global public health crisis moving at a speed and scale never witnessed by living generations.’
‘Let me repeat. The sky is falling,’ she says again. ‘The cracks in our medical and financial systems are being splayed open like a gashing wound.’