New York Governor Andrew Cuomo gives his a press briefing about the coronavirus crisis on April 17, 2020 in Albany, New York.
Matthew Cavanaugh | Getty Images
New York state continues to see a decline in the number of hospitalizations from the coronavirus and daily deaths from infections, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday.
But Cuomo also noted the need to significantly expand testing for Covid-19 in the state, and called on the federal government to help New York labs acquire chemical reagents needed to perform those tests.
Speaking at a press conference in Albany, Cuomo said that at least 540 people died Friday in New York from the coronavirus, 90 fewer deaths that the previous day. The total number of fatalities statewide to date stands at 13,362.
Friday was the lowest daily tally of officially reported Covid-19 fatalities in more than a week.
Pointing to the number of current hospitalizations, which had dropped in recent days to below 17,000, and the number of patients requiring ventilators to assist with their breathing, the governor said, “If you look at the past three days you could argue that we are past the plateau and are starting to descend, which would be very good news.”
But Cuomo noted that the number of new cases of coronavirus being reported each day in the state continues to hover around 2,000.
That is “still an overwhelming number every day,” he said.
“We’re not at the plateau anymore, but we’re still not in a good position,” Cuomo said.
But Cuomo said reopening state businesses and other public spaces will require a much higher number of coronavirus tests than are now being performed, in order to make sure that the virus is not spreading at an excessively high rate.
The lack of sufficient supplies of reagents has been cited by labs in the state as the main reason they are not performing the number of tests that they are now capable of doing with their existing testing machines.
New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States.
