Armed with COVID-19 statistics, state seeks to sharpen its attack

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Saturday said the state’s COVID-19 death toll remained “obnoxiously and terrifyingly high,” with 299 more New Yorkers dying from the disease on Friday, and that the state will gather more data on coronavirus patients to better understand exactly who is contracting the virus and how.

Cuomo also released the latest numbers on statewide testing for antibodies to the coronavirus, which continued to show that Latino and black New Yorkers are much more likely to have contracted the virus than whites.

Cuomo said the state was planning to hand out 7 million cloth masks, including to grocery-store workers, public-housing residents, homeless shelters and nursing homes, and he announced that $1.6 million would be sent to Long Island food banks strained by the burgeoning number of residents seeking assistance amid the economic hardship caused by the pandemic. Another $23.4 million will be distributed statewide.

The governor’s daily briefings have become a ritual of presenting bar charts with encouraging news — such as a continued drop in COVID-19 patients hooked up to ventilators — along with a sober reminder that the pandemic still kills hundreds of New Yorkers every day, and hundreds more daily are becoming sick enough to require hospitalization.

The number of deaths rose slightly from 289 Thursday to 299 Friday, although the overall trend has been a steady — but agonizingly slow — fall in fatalities. Thursday was the first time in more than a month that the death toll fell below 300, and Saturday was the seventh straight day that the governor reported a daily death toll below 400.

“It’s still not dropping at the rate we would like to see it drop,” he said.

However, the numbers show a sharp decline from the peak of nearly 800 daily deaths reported about three weeks ago.

Statewide, 18,909 people have died of COVID-19-related complications, including 1,745 in Nassau County and 1,227 in Suffolk, according to the state Health Department.

Those numbers may be undercounts. New York City's death toll of people whose infection was confirmed by a laboratory test is 13,156, but the city health department lists another 5,126 people as "probable" COVID-19-related deaths as of Saturday afternoon.

Tracking hospitalizations

Overall, hospitalizations continue to fall statewide. Northwell Health on Saturday said the number of COVID-19 patients at its 19 hospitals fell to 1,538, a drop of more than 100 in the last day and a decrease of about 25% in the last week. The number is down 54% from the peak of 3,360 more than three weeks ago.

Statewide, the daily number of new COVID-19 hospitalizations, which had hovered near 900 for a few days and had been at about 3,200 in early April, fell to 831 on Friday.

“That is still an unacceptably high rate,” Cuomo said. “We’re trying to understand exactly why that is ... to find out where those new cases are being generated, and then get to those areas, get to those places, get to those people to try to target our attack.”

Cuomo said that, starting Saturday, the state wants hospitals to ask patients what type of work they do, whether they use public transit, what health conditions they may have in addition to COVID-19, and if they were admitted from another facility, such as a nursing home, along with the precise location where they live, and their race, ethnicity, age and gender.

“We know that vulnerable populations are paying the highest price: our seniors, our nursing homes and our poorer communities,” he said. “They are the ones where you have higher infection rates, and you have higher risk and higher exposure.”

Data reveals disparities

Antibody testing data showed stark racial, ethnic, economic and geographic disparities.

The three surveys of 15,103 state residents since April 22 found that Latino New Yorkers were most likely to test positive, with whites the least likely. More than 25% of Hispanics received a positive result, as did 17.4% of black residents. More than 11% of Asians and 7% of whites tested positive.

On Long Island, 11.4% of residents tested positive. In the Bronx, New York City’s poorest borough, 27.6% of residents tested positive, far higher than any other borough. Manhattan had the lowest positive rate of the boroughs: 17%.

Overall, 12.3% of state residents tested positive for antibodies as of Friday, down from 14.9% as of Monday, when about half as many New Yorkers had been tested.

Suffolk protest in focus

Cuomo was asked Saturday about a large protest Friday in Commack that called for a reopening of the economy, a demonstration at which many ignored the 6-foot social distancing guideline and did not wear masks.

“I understand people’s frustration with the economy not being open. I get it,” the governor said. “I want to see the economy open.”

But he said, “I’m not going to put dollar signs over human lives.”

He said New Yorkers have a right to protest but not to endanger the lives of others, which, he said, people are doing when while in public they refuse to wear masks when within 6 feet of others, as the state requires.

“You want to jeopardize your health, God bless you,” he said. “You have no right to jeopardize my health. The mask is not about your health, it’s about my health, and my children’s health, and your children’s health.”

Told that Suffolk County police did not try to enforce social distancing and mask directives, Cuomo said, “I’ve said to law enforcement all across the state, enforce the mask executive order. I said the State Police will help you enforce it if you can’t enforce it. So I believe it should be enforced, because it’s reckless, it’s irresponsible and it’s not about your life, it’s about other people’s lives, and you don’t have a right to do that.”

Suffolk Police Chief Stuart Cameron said many of those in close proximity at the protest were families protesting together.

Cameron said there were about 100 people at the protest, but News 12 Long Island video of the event appears to show a larger number of protesters, with people throughout the demonstration within 6 feet of each other.

The police chief said this was the first such protest in the county and that police were learning from it. Police are planning strategies to address such gatherings in the future, but he declined to reveal those strategies.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said that for future protests, the county might be on hand to provide people with masks. He said the county’s focus is educating residents on matters such as social distancing, but he added, “The police will be out enforcing those measures.”

The governor said the protest occurred during “a highly politicized time.” Protests in New York and elsewhere against stay-at-home orders have included many people with signs, hats and T-shirts supporting President Donald Trump and opposing Democratic governors.

But, Cuomo said, he has “worked very hard to keep politics out of this situation."

Cuomo’s Saturday briefing was at a Metropolitan Transportation Authority maintenance facility in Flushing, Queens. The governor has directed that the New York City subway system be closed from 1 to 5 a.m. each morning so trains can be disinfected.

Responding to criticism that closing the subway for four hours a day would leave homeless people with nowhere to go, Cuomo said, “You do not help the homeless by letting them stay on a subway car and sleep on a subway car in the middle of a global pandemic, when they could expose themselves or others to a virus. That does not help the homeless. I mean, it is common sense.”

LIers hit beaches, parks

With the spring sun shining and temperatures warm, residents flocked to Long Island state parks and beaches Saturday, prompting some to stop accepting visitors by midmorning.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said most crowds at the county’s parks, beaches and waterways were practicing social distancing.

“If they can’t maintain distance, they have masks," she said.

Curran said county fire marshals and police are enforcing social-distancing rules, and the marine bureau is monitoring boats to make sure they are not overloaded and tying up together.

“Our police and public safety officers are out there, not with a hammer, but to politely remind people why social distancing is important,” Curran said.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said early Saturday evening on CNN that the NYPD and other city workers are in parks and elsewhere enforcing social distancing and handing out face coverings. 

“Anyone who tries to resist these basic rules and tries to create a public gathering, for example, or tries to put together, you know, a sports event or anything like that — the NYPD is going to immediately give them a summons, and these are hefty summonses, and we’re going to be very uncompromising about it,” he said.

The mayor also said that if there's not a federal bailout, there's a possibility "we'll be laying people off," including police officers, firefighters, teachers, health care workers and sanitation workers. 

Despite the large drops in hospitalizations, Northwell and other health systems said there has been an alarming decline in regular emergency department visits as patients continue to avoid hospitals.

Northwell, Mount Sinai South Nassau and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital all said volume is down about 50%.

"Patients with urgent medical issues should not put their health on hold," said Joe Calderone, a spokesman for Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside.

Calderone said the emergency department includes a separate area for non-COVID-19 patients. 

70,000-plus cases on LI

The state Saturday reported that an additional 358 people in Nassau County tested positive for the virus, bringing the total to 36,519, and another 441 people in Suffolk received a positive test result, with the total now at 34,478. Statewide, nearly 313,000 people have now tested positive.

Bellone said Suffolk is on track to meet certain U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention metrics for reopening its economy, such as 14 days of lower hospitalization numbers.

“We are only a few days away,” he said.

But he emphasized the county must open safely to avoid a spike in cases and deaths.

“The worst thing is we don’t get this right,” Bellone said, adding that would result in “even greater damage to our economy.”

Bellone said the county also must ramp up testing, which he said is occurring, as well as perform “aggressive contact tracing” to identify people who are infected and those they’ve been in close contact with.

The statewide stay-at-home order runs until May 15, and although Cuomo has discussed loosening restrictions upstate, he has set no timetable for reopening the downstate economy.

Other developments

Amid huge backlogs of bodies at some funeral homes because of the growing COVID-19 death toll, state Attorney General Letitia James on Saturday issued five pages of consumer guidelines for funeral planning, including reminders that funeral homes cannot impose surcharges for those who died of COVID-19 or refuse to embalm or otherwise handle the bodies of people who died of the disease.

“While the challenges the funeral home industry faces are unprecedented, deceased New Yorkers must be treated with respect and dignity,” she said in a statement.

She said new emergency regulations approved by the New York State Cemetery Board that facilitate the transfer of bodies from downstate to upstate crematories would help reduce the backlog.

Also Saturday, the five members of Congress who represent Long Island issued a joint letter urging Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to make trade associations, convention and visitors bureaus and similar organizations eligible for assistance under future versions of the Paycheck Protection Program.