New York COVID-19 Hospitalizations Appear to Reach Plateau: Governor

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
April 7, 2020COVID-19
share
New York COVID-19 Hospitalizations Appear to Reach Plateau: Governor
Medical workers take in patients at a special CCP virus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center in the Borough Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City on April 7, 2020. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 have appeared to reach a plateau, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday, a similar message to the one he gave a day prior.

Over 700 people died in New York in one day from COVID-19, the largest single day death toll during the pandemic, but officials still believe the peak of illnesses may have arrived.

“The number of deaths is a lagging indicator to the number of hospitalizations,” Cuomo told a press conference in Albany. “That’s why you’re seeing the number of deaths increase, because these are people that came in at the peak.”

Patients who enter the hospital with the new disease and have to go onto ventilators spend, on average, weeks hooked up to the machines, which help them breathe. The longer they stay on the ventilators, the less likely they are to survive.

NTD Photo
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo shows a graph at a press conference in Albany on April 7, 2020. (Screenshot/New York Governor’s Office)

While deaths jumped from 4,758 to 5,489, new hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions were both down, and hospitals for the sixth straight day discharged more patients than they admitted.

Only 660 patients were hospitalized while just 68 new patients were admitted to ICUs.

Models that showed New York needing as many as 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 ventilators have been adjusted sharply downward this week. While officials haven’t been clear on how many ventilators they now think they need, Cuomo said the 90,000 hospital beds the state now has will be more than sufficient.

Medical staffing is still an issue, but the state’s facilities have hired 7,000 new workers from a pool that includes retired healthcare workers, doctors and nurses from other states, and medical students.

NTD Photo
A worker disinfects handrails at the emergency entrance outside the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center during the outbreak of the CCP virus in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York on April 6, 2020. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters)

“We are, potentially, at the apex or beginning to be at the apex,” Jim Malatras, president of the State University of New York’s Empire State College, told reporters on Monday, showing a graph that notched the peak of the caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, in the state way below many models projected.

New York reported just 358 hospitalizations on Monday and ICU admissions of 128, along with 132 new intubations, or placement onto ventilators or similar machines.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters Monday night that the data from New York, the hardest-hit in the nation, was promising.

“Everybody who knows me knows that I am very conservative about making projections, but those are the kind of good signs that you look for,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during a televised Monday briefing at the White House, adding, “That’s the first thing you see when you start to see the turnaround.”

From The Epoch Times

ntd newsletter icon
Sign up for NTD Daily
What you need to know, summarized in one email.
Stay informed with accurate news you can trust.
By registering for the newsletter, you agree to the Privacy Policy.
Comments