Following the arrival in New York City of the U.S. Naval hospital ship Comfort, NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo is seen during a press conference at the field hospital site at the Javits Center.
Albin Lohr-Jones | Pacific Press | Getty Images
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday that New York had about seven days to prepare for coronavirus apex in the state, warning that “we’re not yet ready for the high point.”
“Our reading of the projections is: We are somewhere in the seven-day range,” Cumo said at a press briefing on the COVID-19 crisis. “Four, five, six, seven, eight-day range.”
New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, is struggling to increase its hospital capacity and medical supplies as coronavirus continues to spread.
Cuomo said the state had 113,704 total cases and that 3,565 have died. The total number of people newly hospitalized was down to 1,095, from 1,427 a day before, but Cuomo said the reduction was not statistically meaningful. Overall, 15,905 have been hospitalized across New York state and 4,126 people have been placed in ICU due to the coronavirus.
Cuomo said that he was eager to get past the peak, but cautioned that the state was still preparing for the surge. China is donating 1,000 medical ventilators to help those with the most critical cases of the flu-like respiratory infection, he said.
“Part of me would like to beat the apex, and just let’s do it,” he said. “But there’s part of me that says it’s good that we’re not at the apex because we’re not yet ready for the apex, either.”
“We’re still working on the capacity of the system. The more time we have to improve the capacity of the system, the better,” he said.
He said the state now had nearly 80,000 hospital beds, but remained short of masks and ventilators.
“We were focused on beds early on, and we scrambled on the beds,” he said.
Cuomo said that New York would do the best it could with the equipment that was available, but that the state is still ramping up its supplies.
“At some point, you are where you are and then you have to do the best with what you have,” Cuomo said. “We’re not there yet.”
