The total number of new hospitalizations, ICU admissions and daily intubations in New York have decreased each of the past three days — an indication that social distancing may be working, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.
The big picture: The governor's office has been tracking different models that predicted a peak of between 55,000 and 110,000 hospital beds needed for coronavirus patients in New York by the end of April. Data over the past few weeks suggests that hospitalizations may potentially be plateauing earlier than those models projected.
What they're saying:
"We saw where the statisticians and the folks looking at these types of models said it was going. So what activities and actions could you take to aggressively lower that overall number? And the answer really was, and what the governor has been doing was, aggressively enforce and enact social distancing to lower the overall number. And this number and the current data suggests that that is exactly what’s happening. It's not settled yet. ... But this could suggest we are indeed, potentially at the apex, or beginning to be at the apex at this moment."— Jim Malatras, aide to Gov. Cuomo
Yes, but: Despite these new projections, Cuomo said the worst is not over and urged New Yorkers to continue to follow social distancing guidelines.
- Cuomo announced he would extend New York's stay-at-home order until April 29 and raise the potential maximum fine for social distancing violations from $500 to $1,000.
- "There has been a laxness on social distancing especially over this past weekend that is just wholly unacceptable," Cuomo warned. "Look, people are dying. People in the health care system are exposing themselves every day to tremendous risk walking into those emergency rooms."