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Coronavirus in N.Y.: Cuomo Declares State of Emergency
The announcement came as the number of patients in New York rose to 89, including a Queens driver who worked for Uber.
By Jesse McKinley and
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday as the number of coronavirus cases in New York rose to 89, which include a Queens driver who worked for Uber and two unexplained positive tests of patients 200 miles to the north.
Moving on multiple fronts to curb the spread of the virus, Mr. Cuomo said the state of emergency would allow New York’s government to respond faster by lifting regulations.
The governor’s announcement came as concerns about the outbreak grew in New York City, which has 12 confirmed cases, up from six that were disclosed as of Friday. The epicenter in New York State continues to be just north of the city, in Westchester County, where there are 70 cases in total. These cases were mostly, if not all, related to a cluster in Westchester that first came to the authorities’ attention after a New Rochelle resident, a 50-year-old lawyer, was confirmed as New York’s second coronavirus patient.
State officials said they were testing dozens of mouth and nasal swabs from people who might have been exposed to the lawyer, who has been hospitalized but whose condition is said to be improving. Technicians are working around the clock at private and public laboratories, including a major site near the State Capitol.
In the United States, more than 380 cases of the virus have been confirmed, and at least 19 people have died, according to a New York Times database.
Despite the spread in the state and the mounting toll of the virus, which has killed more than 3,500 people worldwide, Mr. Cuomo sought to calm the public during a news conference in Albany.
“You know what’s worse than the virus — the anxiety,” Mr. Cuomo said, noting that most patients would suffer mild or no symptoms.[Why Closing the New York City Public Schools Is a ‘Last Resort’]
The declaration of emergency will allow the state to speed up the purchasing of supplies and the hiring of workers to assist local health departments that have been handling the monitoring of thousands of self-quarantined patients, Mr. Cuomo said.
“Somebody has to go knock on their door, once a day,” he said. “This is labor intensive.”
The declaration would also allow officials to skirt purchasing regulations, if necessary, he said.
UPDATE: We have learned of new confirmed cases of #Coronavirus in NYS bringing the total number of cases to 76.
- 57 cases in Westchester County
- 11 cases in NYC
- 4 cases in Nassau County
- 2 cases in Rockland County
- 2 cases in Saratoga County
Still, there were signs that the outbreak was spreading, including a pair of patients in Saratoga County, north of Albany — the first such confirmed cases outside of the New York City region.
On Friday night, the Uber driver from Queens tested positive, and the case prompted more than 40 doctors, nurses and other workers at a hospital there to go into voluntary self-isolation over fears that they might have been exposed to the coronavirus, officials said on Saturday.
The man, 33, walked into St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in the Far Rockaway section of Queens on Tuesday and reported flulike symptoms. He went home and returned later when his symptoms worsened, an official said.
Dozens of workers at the hospital are now being tested, officials said.
“Obviously, 40 people are out,” said Councilman Donovan Richards Jr., a Democrat who represents Far Rockaway. “The hospital will need to replace those people temporarily. They will need money to do that. They need supplies. We need to keep the health care up and running.”
Tom Melillo, a hospital spokesman, said that the patient remained in quarantine at the hospital on Saturday, and that hospital officials were monitoring everyone who might have been exposed to the patient.
Tom Melillo, a hospital spokesman, said that the patient remained in quarantine at the hospital on Saturday, and that hospital officials were monitoring everyone who might have been exposed to the patient.
A spokesman for Uber, Andrew Hasbun, confirmed that the man worked as a driver for the app. The company is assisting health officials to determine whether the man exposed passengers to the illness, Mr. Hasbun said.
The man was not licensed to pick up passengers in the city or at its two airports, but he was free to drop off passengers in the five boroughs, the company said. Those limitations might affect the number of people he exposed to the virus.
Other cases in New York City include three family members who live in the Upper West Side, two Brooklyn women in their 60s and 70s who showed symptoms after returning from a cruise in Egypt and a Brooklyn man in his 30s who remains hospitalized after visiting Italy, one of countries with the biggest outbreaks outside China.
Several of the new cases announced on Saturday in upstate New York added a layer of mystery to exactly how residents were contracting the coronavirus.
In Saratoga County, the two new cases involved a 57-year-old pharmacist and a 52 year-old woman who may have contracted the virus through contact with a Pennsylvania resident at a conference in Miami.The source of contraction seemed more direct in Westchester County:
All 23 new cases announced on Saturday involved people who had been in contact with the New Rochelle man, Mr. Cuomo said
All 23 new cases announced on Saturday involved people who had been in contact with the New Rochelle man, Mr. Cuomo said
The man, a partner at a small Midtown Manhattan law firm, had attended synagogue services before becoming symptomatic.
Public health officials closed the synagogue, Young Israel of New Rochelle, and asked that anyone who had attended services, a bat mitzvah or a funeral there recently isolate themselves as a precaution.
Also on Saturday, the governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, said a New York doctor who commutes to work at Bridgeport Hospital tested positive for the coronavirus. Mr. Lamont said the physician did not show visible symptoms while treating patients and isolated himself.
New Jersey officials said four people in the state had tested positive for the virus: a 32-year-old man, a man in his 50s and a woman in her 30s, all from Bergen County near New York; and a man in his 60s from Camden County, in the southern part of the state.
Mr. Cuomo on Saturday did not say how many New Yorkers were now isolating themselves at home over fears they might have been exposed to the virus. But as of Friday, New York officials said they had asked about 4,000 people in the state to self-quarantine.
About 2,300 of that quarantined group were in New York City, and most of them had recently returned from five countries where the outbreak has been most severe: China, Iran, Italy, Japan and South KoreIn his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Cuomo said the state was aggressively testing as many people as possible.“We want to find positives,” the governor said, adding that while some people might be disconcerted by the rising number of patients, it showed that the solid medical detective work was underway. “We say, ‘That’s good news, that we know who the people are.’”New York City officials have asked the federal government to send more diagnostic kits for the coronavirus, saying in a letter on Friday that the city’s limited capacity to test had “impeded our ability to beat back this epidemic."