More than 10,000 people are infected with coronavirus in New York state, where some 1,600 are hospitalized for Covid-19, according to the latest balance provided this Saturday by the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, who has urgently requested medical supplies.
Of the 10,356 diagnoses reported by Cuomo, more than 6,000 were registered in New York City after 1,803 new infections were detected. However, after the conference, the figure was raised by the authorities, with about 1,300 other cases in the metropolis.
“We need 30,000 (lung assist) ventilators, we only have 6,000. At least we have those”, Declared the governor.
Cuomo has confirmed that New York State will take the city a million masks. “It won’t help us get through the crisis, but it will make a significant contribution to the problem we have in this regard in New York City.”
The city, the great focus of the epidemic in the country -with 46 deaths-, has carried out more than 45 thousand diagnostic tests, the highest number in the country, but that would be about to change. According to a statement reported by the chain CNN, New York will suspend the “unnecessary” tests in the next few hours, which “will become more important once the pandemic has reached its peak,” according to a statement collected by the US network CNN.
With the withdrawal of the tests, the next balances will not faithfully represent the reality of the infections, according to the chain’s medical specialist, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Also, the authorities are evaluating places to put new hospital beds, including the main convention center in New York City and some state college campuses. The goal is to bring the hospital’s capacity, which is now around 50,000, to 75,000 beds, Cuomo said.
Possible locations for temporary hospitals, which would be operated by the Army Corps of Engineers, include Stony Brook University and SUNY College in Old Westbury on Long Island and Westchester County Center, in addition to the Javits Center in Manhattan. “Everything that can be done is being done,” said the governor.
On Friday, New York decreed the suspension of all non-essential activities, despite the fact that the total confinement of the country has been ruled out by President Donald Trump for now. “We are all in quarantine”, summed up Cuomo, announcing the “most radical measure we can take.”
The rich flee
The panic of contagion and confinement after the tightening of measures due to the advance of the virus caused that New Yorkers with greater purchasing power practically ran out to rent residences in the famous Hamptons, a vacation spot for the richest Americans, on Long Island, and the Hudson Valley, in the north of the state characterized by large houses and farms, to get away from the city, which with more than 5,100 cases concentrates the largest number of the Covid-19, and being forced to be at home.
This stampede of the rich fleeing the city has caused the prices of rentals in those areas they have tripled in a winter period that is considered low season, according to several real estate agents to CNBC.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Delyse Berry, who works for Upstate Downn in the Hudson Valley, where houses that paid $ 4,000 a month during the winter season have risen to $ 18,000 for the month. April before this demand.
In the Hamptons March is a low season month for rentals, yet with the crisis caused by Covid-19 and the desire to escape the city, homeowners are renting at peak season prices in August.
“People are calling and saying ‘I need to rent and I need it for today“Gary DePersia, a well-known real estate agent with the Corcorán company in the Hamptons, told the chain, where he rented a beachfront residence to a family who will pay $ 100,000 for the month of April.
(With information from Europa Press and EFE)
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