New York Governor Andrew Cuomo informed that 799 COVID-19 patients died over the last 24 hours, although his state saw a reduction in the number of new hospitalizations.
RELATED:
US Becomes First Country to Report 200,000 Coronavirus Cases
The total death toll in New York now exceeds 7,000, forcing authorities to bring additional funeral home employees to the area to cope with the volume of bodies.
"If someone had told me that as governor I would have to take these measures, I couldn't have imagined it," Cuomo said.
Despite the new daily record of deaths, he confirmed that other indicators continue to show that New York is flattening the curve thanks to confinement and social distancing.
In the last 24 hours, the number of new hospitalizations fell to 200, compared to over 1,400 that were registered on some days last week. There were only 84 intensive care admissions.
New York state has now sufficient beds and is moving away from the worst projections for which it was preparing.
"This virus attacked the vulnerable and attacked the weak and it's our job as a society to protect the vulnerable," Cuomo said, as reported by Aljazeera.
According to Columbia University, the worst-case scenario implied that 136,000 hospital beds would be necessary in New York City alone.
Up to now, however, there are some 90,000 in the state, including all the additional capacity that authorities have been setting in recent weeks.
COVID-19-related deaths in New York account for almost half of the total recorded in the U.S., where over 432,000 cases have been confirmed, according to Johns Hopkins University.
As of the Wednesday morning, authorities reported 6,268 people who died of COVID-19 in the New York state. About 63 percent of the victims statewide were 70 years old or older.
Newsletter
