New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced the state will reopen racecourses with no crowds, one day after he gave a chilling warning over the Kawasaki-like disease linked to COVID-19.
In a press briefing in Albany Saturday, Cuomo announced some new steps to safely reopen activities across the state.
Horse racing tracks will be allowed to reopen from June 1 without crowds so races can be broadcast on TV and the Watkins Glen International racetrack will also reopen.
‘We’re looking for economic activities that you can start without crowds and without gatherings – remember the problem here is crowds and gatherings so what economic activity is willing to open without a crowd?’ he asked.
In a press briefing in Albany Saturday, Cuomo announced some new steps to safely reopen activities across the state including reopening racecourses with no crowds
Horse racing tracks will be allowed to reopen from June 1 without crowds so races can be broadcast on TV and the Watkins Glen International racetrack (file picture) will also reopen
Cuomo suggested other sports, such as baseball, could also run events as long as they do not have fans in attendance.
‘In terms of sport you can have baseball without a crowd and it can be televised,’ he said.
However, when asked about the New York Mets and Yankees reopening, Cuomo admitted the decision does not rest with him.
‘One state can’t make that decision… but if it works [then] economically that would be great,’ he said.
Cuomo said reopening economic activities has the added benefit of encouraging people to stay home.
‘There’s lots of people sitting at home… staying home is easier if there’s some entertainment,’ he said.
‘So if you look at the risk-reward there’s a lot of reward for minimum risk.’
Elective surgeries can also resume in Westchester County and Suffolk County, including at Ambulatory Surgery Centers.
The announcements came Saturday as daily hospitalizations, new cases and intubations from COVID-19 continued on a downward trend in New York Friday.
Confirmed cases increased by 400 to reach 345,813 and another 157 people died, including 105 in hospitals and 53 nursing homes.
This takes the state death toll to 22,461.
Though the figures are going in the right direction, Cuomo warned New Yorkers that ‘we need to make sure we don’t go back to the hell we’ve gone through.’
This came a day after Cuomo sent out a chilling warning about the rising cases of the Kawasaki-like disease linked to COVID-19 among children.
The mystery illness, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), sees patients present symptoms similar to the Kawasaki disease.
Kawasaki is a condition that causes inflammation in the walls of the blood vessels and affects mostly children under five years old.
In New York there are more than a hundred cases, with at least three children – aged 5, 7 and 18 – dead from the condition.
Cuomo admitted in his Friday press briefing that he is ‘afraid’ that the US will ‘see more’ of the disease.
‘Right now it’s 103 cases in New York,’ he said. ‘I tell you what I’m afraid of – it’s not 103 cases in New York, it’s just that we have seen it first and it was deceptive the way it represented because for COVID they were all looking for respiratory illnesses.
‘And this is not a respiratory illness, this is an inflammation of the blood vessels.’
He said the syndrome did ‘not look or smell like’ coronavirus so it went undetected for some time.
‘It did not look or smell like a COVID case [then] when they went back and checked the overwhelming number of children tested positive or had the antibodies – close to like 90 percent either were positive or had the antibodies and I think you’re going to see more of this,’ he warned.
Cuomo gave a grave warning that as scientists discover more about coronavirus, they find out that it is more deadly than first thought.
When the virus first started spreading across the nation, it was thought that children were at a very low risk of dying from the virus.
Shocking images show the rare inflammatory disease on the six-month-old Californian girl believed to be one of the first to contract both COVID-19 and rare disease
‘There’s stories of other illnesses popping up and now they’re saying this COVID virus does more damage in the body than we were aware of but specifically with children,’ he said.
‘The reason I want this point abundantly clear is because this is not what we were told initially and this is not what I told people initially.
‘We were told it was primarily vulnerable people and the good news is that children seem unaffected and that then gave me a false sense of security.’
The governor admitted that ‘we were wrong about that’ and branded it a ‘big about-face’.
He also pointed to the growing uncertainty about people becoming immune to the deadly virus.
‘It was also an about-face if you have the virus and you have the antibodies you’re immune and you can go back to work,’ he said.
‘Now maybe not. Maybe you’re immune, maybe you’re not, maybe you’re a little immune, we don’t know.
‘The more we learn the worse it is and the more we learn it’s only negative – we’ve not learnt anything since we started where we say this is better than we thought.’
His stark warnings over the growing cases of the rare inflammatory disease in children came the day after the CDC issued an alert about the condition.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has issued an alert over a rare but sometimes deadline autoimmune condition among children, similar to the Kawasaki disease
‘Healthcare providers who have cared or are caring for patients younger than 21 years of age meeting MIS-C criteria should report suspected cases to their local, state, or territorial health department,’ the CDC warned Thursday.
The condition had previously been referred to as Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (PMIS) by the state of New York.
The agency’s case definition includes current or recent COVID-19 infection or exposure to the virus, a fever of at least 100.4 for at least 24 hours, severe illness requiring hospitalization, inflammatory markers in blood tests, and evidence of problems affecting at least two organs that could include the heart, kidneys, lungs, skin or other nervous system.
The name and definition are similar to those used in Europe, where the condition was first reported several weeks ago and where scientists have found the first clear evidence that infection with coronavirus causes the inflammatory condition.
The CDC said that physicians should ‘consider MIS-C in any pediatric death with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection,’ referring to the virus that causes COVID-19.
But it is not yet known if the condition is limited to children, the CDC added.
Children with the illness are usually taken to hospital with a high fever that has lasted a number of days and severe abdominal pain. The most seriously ill may develop sepsis-like symptoms such as rapid breathing and poor blood circulation