NEW YORK -- Governor Andrew Cuomo used his daily press conference on Monday to ask for help from health care workers across the country.
"If you don't have a health care crisis within your community, please come help us now," he said. "Today it's New York, tomorrow it will be somewhere else. This is the time for us to help one another."
He repeated his promise to help other states once the peak of the pandemic has passed in New York.
The USN Comfort arrived in New York today, with a thousand beds and more than a thousand medical personnel. New York City Mayor Bill DiBlasio said 750 patients with non-virus related illnesses will be moved there immediately.
Cuomo said he had a conference with every health care system in the state, and he anticipated an unprecedented level of cooperation among different systems and among public and private hospitals. Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, currently the most-stressed facility, will now be getting help from other regional hospitals.
“Anyone who says this is a New York City-only phenomenon is in denial,” he said. “There is no American that is immune.”
There are more than 66,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the state, while 4200 people have been treated and discharged.
Cuomo predicted the worst is yet to come. The state has projected the apex of the virus' spread is expected within the next 21 days. So far, the rate of infection has continued to climb, as has the number of people hospitalized, but the rate of increase has slowed from doubling every two days to doubling every six days.
He said medical supplies continue to be an essential need, noting that any stockpile is being created to anticipate the even greater need that is coming.
Responding to a remark by President Trump that equipment “may be going out the back door,” Cuomo said, “I don't even know what that means.”
Locally, State Senator James Seward and his wife Cindy have announced they are both dealing with the COVID-19 virus. Seward was hospitalized in Albany and is expected to recover fully, while his wife has been quarantined at home.
Delaware County current has 9 confirmed cases of the virus, with the first person infected now said to be fully recovered. Otsego County has 14, according to a press release from the county health department yesterday. One person has died there. Ulster County reports 205 and Sullivan County has 88 confirmed cases of the virus.
