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The number of coronavirus deaths in New York has increased by 731 overnight in what has been the largest daily leap yet, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.
The uptick comes after Cuomo said the figure had been “effectively flat” in the two days prior, with 599 and 594 deaths on Monday and Sunday, respectively.
“That 731 people who we lost – behind every one of those numbers is an individual, is a family, is a mother, is a father, is a sister, is a brother,” Cuomo said. “So, a lot of pain again today for many New Yorkers and they are in our thoughts and prayers.”
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The governor said that in a bit of “good news," the three-day average of new hospitalizations is down. Admissions into ICU facilities have dropped again as well, while the hospital discharge rate continues to rise.
“Right now we are projecting that we are reaching a plateau in the total number of hospitalizations and you can see the growth, you see it starting to flatten,” Cuomo said.
However, he emphasized that it's still a projection and could change at any time, depending on how the public responds to the coronavirus crisis.
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Cuomo said the reason why hospital intake is falling, but deaths are increasing, is because the latter figure “is a lagging indicator to the number of hospitalizations.”
“What happens is a person goes into the hospital, if they are treated, most of them are then released, they are discharged. Some stay, some get put on ventilators,” he told reporters Tuesday. “The longer you are on a ventilator the less likely you will ever come off that ventilator. And that is why you are seeing the number of deaths increase because these are people who came in at the peak, they were not successfully treated.”
New York remains the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The state has seen at least 131,830 positive coronavirus cases since it began. New York has recorded at least 5,489 deaths, up from 4,758 on Monday. The United States is the hardest-hit country with at least 369,069 infections. More than 20,000 have recovered.
