First, the bad news.
On both April 6th and 7th, New York set new highs for daily coronavirus deaths, back-to-back. On Monday, 731 people died, followed by 779 on Tuesday. Since COVID-19 first entered the state on March 1, New York has quickly become the epicenter of the entire country.
As of this writing, over 149,000 residents have tested positive for the virus, with 6,268 deaths. That’s close to 40% of all infections and half of all deaths in the United States. To put that number in perspective, the coronavirus has now killed twice as many New Yorkers as 9/11.
On April 8th, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered flags in the state lowered to half-staff to honor victims of the virus.
“Behind every one of those numbers is an individual, is a mother, is a father, is a brother, is a sister. So a lot of pain again today,” said Governor Cuomo during Tuesday’s daily update.
Reason to Hope
But there is also good news.
The rates of coronavirus hospitalizations and Intensive Care Unit admissions are slowing. People dying today were hospitalized weeks ago, and the decrease may mean that the spread of infection is slowing.
- From the 6th to the 7th, the number of hospital admissions in New York increased by just 4%. That was the fourth straight day of increases less than 7%. This comes after weeks of daily increases of over 20%.
- On Sunday the 5th, there were 395 new coronavirus hospitalizations in New York. Four days earlier, there were 1,427. That is a decrease of 75%.
- At the same time, only 89 people were admitted to ICUs. For comparison, 395 were admitted the previous Friday.
“We’re flattening the curve,” Governor Cuomo said Wednesday. He added that if the these rates continue to go down, the New York hospital system could stabilize within the next two weeks. Already the estimated demand for hospital beds is in the 20,000 to 30,000 range, much lower than the original projection of 110,000.
The Governor also stressed the importance of continuing to observe social distancing guidelines. “To the extent that we see a flattening or a possible plateau, that’s because of what we are doing and we have to keep doing it,” he said.
Beating the Models
The original models created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that there would be up to 240,000 COVID-19 deaths in America.
During President Trump’s daily coronavirus briefing on April 8th, it was announced that the IHME projections have been reduced to 61,000.
Similarly, the IMHE originally predicted that by April 3rd, there would be as many as 181,000 new coronavirus hospitalizations across the United States. But according to newest statistics, the actual number is closer to 47,000.
These newest numbers highlight that, while the situation remains tragically serious, there is reason for guarded optimism in the next few weeks. If the coronavirus crisis in America has peaked, then we might see a reduction in coronavirus deaths.
During Wednesday’s briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in America, said that mitigation efforts — including social distancing — were definitely having a positive effect. As a result, coronavirus deaths in New York are expected to finally expected to peak this week.
But Dr. Fauci did have one caveat — “Don’t get complacent.”