New York City hospitals will run out of ventilators by Wednesday at the latest, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned on Sunday during his coronavirus briefing.
‘We have bought a few more days here,’ the mayor told reporters at City Hall on Sunday.
‘We believe now we can get to Tuesday or Wednesday with the supplies we have.’
The mayor added: ‘I want to be clear, it only means a few more days, nothing more I can guarantee beyond that.’
According to de Blasio, the city has 135 ventilators in reserve.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Sunday that the city’s stockpile of ventilators is dwindling and it will need to replenish its supply to make it through the week
The mayor said the city needs between 1,000 and 1,500 more to get through next week.
De Blasio said he plans to ask for more ventilators from the state and the federal government.
Last week, the mayor said he expected to run out of ventilators by today (Sunday), but he said that the forecast was a bit premature.
‘My order to my entire team … is always to prepare for the worst-case scenario, not the best-case scenario, not what you think might be an average scenario,’ he said.
‘Because God forbid the worst-case happens, we can’t say at that point, “Oh, gee, we underestimated”.’
De Blasio thanked Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, for sending 140 ventilators to New York State.
The mayor also repeated his call for medical volunteers from around the country to lend a hand to the city’s overrun hospitals.
‘I want to say to anyone who wants to help, whether you’re a New Yorker, or you’re from any other part of the country, or any other part of the world, please, we need your help,’ the mayor said on Sunday.
During a press conference on Friday afternoon, de Blasio called on the president to do ‘what no president had ever done before’ and force medical staff from around the US to come to New York to fight.
Healthcare workers load a person into an ambulance outside of the Elmhurst Hospital center in Queens, New York, on Sunday
A ventilator is shown during a news conference in New York last month. The mayor said on Sunday that the city needs up to 1,500 ventilators if it hopes to make it through the week
He says the theoretical army of doctors could then be deployed anywhere in the country to fight the virus where it strikes most viciously.
An emergency alert was also sent to cell phones in New York City on Friday evening, calling on licensed healthcare workers to volunteer to ‘support facilities in need’.
The mayor on Sunday also pushed back on suggestions that he wasn’t setting a good example after he was spotted on Saturday walking in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with his wife.
Neither he or his wife were wearing any face coverings, despite city officials explicitly recommending that residents who leave their homes cover their faces.
In response to reporters’ questions, de Blasio said he was adhering to the recommendations by wearing a scarf.
‘If you are distant from everyone, there’s no one near you, there is not a specific need,’ he said.
‘If you think you’re going to be near people, you bring it up and cover your face.
‘That is what I did.’
He added: ‘You don’t have to wear it every minute.’
As of Sunday afternoon, 2,256 residents of New York City died after contracting the coronavirus.
Officials in the city reported more than 67,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Has New York coronoavirus peaked? Daily death toll falls to 594 from 630 prompting Gov. Andrew Cuomo to suggest the crisis may have reached apex as hospitalizations and ICU admissions fall
The daily death toll in New York State dipped on Sunday, a sign that the state may have hit the apex of the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
There were 4,159 fatalities as of Sunday morning – up 594 from the day before.
A record 630 deaths were reported Saturday. The numbers Sunday reflect the first time fatalities have dropped over 24 hours in a number of days.
Governor Cuomo hesitated to say the worst was definitely over for the Empire state but added: ‘The apex could be a plateau and we could be on that plateau now. We won’t know until you see the next few days, does it go up, does it go down.
Cuomo also announced the number of people discharged from hospitals has also gone ‘way up’, adding: ‘That’s great news.’
There were 574 new hospitalizations Sunday Cuomo said – down from 1,095 on Saturday and 1,427 on Friday.
March 22 marked the last time less than 600 new hospitalizations were recorded, with 586.
Confirmed coronavirus cases were up around 8,000 to 122,031.
Governor Cuomo, pictured Sunday, hesitated to say the worst was definitely over for the Empire state but added: ‘The apex could be a plateau and we could be on that plateau now’
The daily death toll in New York dipped Sunday. There were 4,159 fatalities as of Sunday
There were 574 new hospitalizations Sunday Cuomo said – down from 1,095 on Saturday
Cuomo said of the dipping death toll: ‘What is the significance of that it is too early to tell.’ He said officials will be able to tell ‘by next week’ if the figures represent a plateau or dip.
But he did warn there has been a ‘shift to Long Island’ and acknowledged there is ‘overcapacity across the board’ with a ‘tremendous amount of stress on the system’.
Cuomo added: ‘We need to balance the patient load among hospitals. We have to shift the patient load to other hospitals.
‘We are running short of supplies across the board. We are literally going day to day with supplies and staff.’
Cuomo told reporters: ‘For those people who look at the data, you have all these projection models and what’s been infuriating to me is the models are so different that it’s very hard to plan when these models shift all the time.
‘But there’s also a difference of opinion on what happens at the apex. All the models say you go up until you go down – thank you very much. Then there’s a difference of, is the apex a point or is the apex a plateau.
‘In other words you go up, hit the high and the immediately drop, or do you go up and then there’s a plateau where the number of cases stays high for a period of time and then drops? There’s a difference of opinion.
‘So you have to think about that when you think about what you’re seeing in the numbers because you could argue that you’re seeing a slight plateauing in the data which obviously would be good news because it means you plateau for a period of time and then you start to come down and we’re all feeling our way through this and we have the best minds in the country, literally on the globe, advising us because New York is the first. I also think it will be very helpful for the other states that follow.’
Noting the ‘cabin fever’ New Yorkers may be feeling as a result of isolation, Cuomo said he will be taking up daily runs alongside his family.
He also noted that the crime rate is down in New York City as are hospital admissions for traffic accidents and other traumas.
The US death toll skyrocketed to 9,144 Sunday and the number of cases surged to 312, 601 Americans infected by the killer virus.
Hospital workers at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn push the gurneys carrying the recently deceased to a temporary morgue inside refrigerated container trucks on Saturday
Hospital workers at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn push the gurneys carrying the recently deceased to a temporary morgue inside refrigerated container trucks on Saturday
Cuomo said ‘rapid testing will be the answer’ to the stop the spread of the virus. But said ‘we are not going to make ventilators in two weeks’ in response to companies such as Tesla offering to build the machines.
The governor, whose state is the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, said New York was part of an effort to develop a program that would identify people who are both negative and not in a vulnerable category, allowing them to go back to work.
A stark new model – created by researchers from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics – shows New York will reach its peak in five days with 855 deaths on April 10.
Cuomo added: ‘I think you see the return for normalcy when we have an approved rapid testing program that can be brought to scale.
‘People can go back to work because they know they’re negative. I think that is under development, but that is going to be the end and we’re going to get through it because we’re New York tough.’
He added: ‘There’s not enough in the federal stockpile to take care of New York and Illinois and Texas and Florida and California. It’s just not an option.
‘The only option I see is there’s a national deployment. Everyone says this is wartime. It is a war, and the virus is the enemy. Help New York today and then nationally, we shift the resources to the next place that is most impacted.’
Donald Trump reportedly told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that the football season will still begin in September in a conference call on Saturday as the president claimed we ‘have to open our country again’.
Asked about the return of sport Cuomo said: ‘I would love to see sports back. It would help with cabin fever. But this is not about hopes and dreams and aspirations and what you would like to see.
‘None of us like being here. Follow the data, follow the science. Let the doctors and health-care professionals tell you when it’s safe to reopen and that’s when you reopen.’
A patient arrives to Wyckoff Hospital in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn on April 5
A nearly empty subway platform is seen at the 42nd Street subway station during the coronavirus outbreak in New York City