NEW YORK (AP) — The steep rise in coronavirus deaths in New York seems to be leveling off in a possible sign that social distancing is working in the most lethal hot spot in the U.S., the governor said Monday — a trend that appears to have taken hold more convincingly in hard-hit Italy and Spain.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned that this is no time to relax the restrictions aimed at keeping people from getting too close to one another, and he ordered bigger fines against violators.
“The numbers look like it may be turning. `Yay, it’s over!’ No, it’s not. And other places have made that mistake,” he said.
Stocks rallied on Wall Street and around the world on the news out of the U.S. and in Europe, where deaths and new infections appear to be slowing not only in some of the most severely stricken countries but in the Netherlands and Germany as well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 1,300 points, or 6%, by early afternoon.
Britain’s outbreak was headed in the opposite direction, as the country reported more than 600 deaths Sunday, surpassing Italy’s daily increase for the second day in a row. And 55-year-old Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was infected last month, was hospitalized in what his office described as a precaution because of persistent symptoms.
More than 10,000 people have died of the virus in the United States, and it leads the world in confirmed infections at around 350,000.
The number of dead in New York state climbed past 4,700, and the death toll in New York City closed in on the 2,753 lives lost at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The state has been averaging just under 600 deaths per day for the past four days. As horrific as that number is, the roughly steady daily totals were seen a positive sign. Cuomo also reported that the number of new people entering hospitals daily has dropped, as has the number of critically ill patients who require ventilators.
At the same time, he ordered schools and nonessential businesses to remain closed until the end of the month, announced he is doubling the fines for rule breakers to $1,000, and lambasted New Yorkers for being out in parks over the weekend.
“That is just wholly unacceptable,” he said. “People are dying. People in the health care system are exposing themselves every day to tremendous risk walking into these emergency rooms.”
Elsewhere around the world, Italy’s day-to-day increase in new COVID-19 cases dipped again, for the lowest one-day increase in early three weeks. The country, ravaged by the virus, also saw a drop for the third straight day in intensive care beds occupied by infected patients.
Italy still has, by far, the world’s highest coronavirus death toll — over 16,500 — but the pressure on intensive care units in the north has eased so much that the region is no longer airlifting patients to other regions.
Nursing coordinator Maria Berardelli at the hard-hit Pope John XXIII hospital in Bergamo said that while the numbers of new patients had eased up a bit, hospital staff members were still pulling long, difficult shifts.
“There has been no reduction in the work,” Berardelli said. “There have been fewer admissions to the emergency room, but our intensive care units are still full, so the activity hasn’t been reduced.”
In Spain, deaths and new infections dropped again Monday. The health ministry reported 637 new deaths, the lowest toll in 13 days, for a total of over 13,000 dead. New infections were also the lowest in two weeks.