New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Saturday showed the first decrease in daily coronavirus deaths for the state, in what may be a promising trend for the state’s handling of the pandemic.
During a Sunday press briefing, Cuomo displayed a graph showing the trend of cases, with 562 deaths on Thursday, 630 on Friday and then back down to 594 on Saturday. He said the new numbers could indicate the state has reached its apex for the virus, but cautioned it may be too early to tell.
“The number of deaths over the past few days has been dropping, for the first time,” Cuomo said before cautioning, “What is the significance of that? It’s too early to tell.”
Cuomo said daily visits to intensive care units (ICU) is down and the number of daily cases requiring intubation is also down. He added that the discharge rate was also “way up.”
Cuomo suggested one day of data would not be enough to establish a pattern and that several consecutive days would be needed to potentially show a promising trend for the state’s handling of the virus.
The governor went on to speculate as to whether the apex for coronavirus cases is a single point or if it may be a relative plateau overall multiple days with the number of daily cases and deaths staying stable for a certain time before eventually receding.
“You have to think about that when you think about what you are seeing in the numbers,” Cuomo said. He urged New Yorkers to continue to stay isolated and protected from social interactions, regardless of the promising data at the moment.
New York has been one of the main hotspots for the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. and Cuomo had reported more than 122,000 coronavirus cases in the state and at least 4,159 related fatalities at the time of his press briefing.
The New York numbers represent a significant portion of the overall coronavirus numbers for the U.S. In total, the U.S. has recorded 324,052 cases of coronavirus, of which there have been 9,180 fatalities, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus case tracking map. Another 16,789 patients that have contracted the virus have reportedly recovered.
