NEW YORK | The authorities in New York, the American epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, on Monday called on Donald Trump to declare a national coercive confinement while it ensured a return to business “very soon”.
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The first American metropolis, the economic capital of the country with 8.6 million inhabitants, had more than 12,000 cases Monday morning, nearly a third of American cases, and nearly 100 deaths. A total of 560 people have died in the United States.
Faced with this increasingly dramatic situation, anxiety mounted among the inhabitants of this city, usually a symbol of hyper-activity and decibels.
The streets were exceptionally quiet after new rules came into effect on Sunday limiting activity to businesses deemed essential – supermarkets, pharmacies, internet providers – and forcing people to stay at home as much as possible, even though violators do not expose themselves for the moment to any sanction.
“These containment measures taken by New York and California must be everywhere” in the United States, insisted Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We have to take these extreme measures.”
Almost a third of Americans live in some form of confinement. Washington state, Michigan and New Mexico are the latest to order people to stay at home on Monday, and the California governor has toughened restrictions.
“Unfortunately, we see that New York is getting closer to Italy,” said Jerome Adams, federal administrator of public health, lamenting that people do not seriously apply the federal recommendations of containment, non-coercive, announced last week. , for 15 days.
Both Mr. de Blasio and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo have re-launched their calls for the federal government to order private companies to manufacture respirators and masks, which are sorely lacking in the United States, as in many countries. other countries.
“Yes, it’s an assertion of government power over private companies, so what? It’s a national emergency, ”Cuomo said. “We can no longer continue to be supplied on an ad hoc basis”.
Donald Trump hésitant
So far, Republican Donald Trump has resisted imposing such measures, worried about their impact on the economy, even though about one in three Americans is already expected to live in confinement.
“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” he tweeted on Monday, as the US Senate again failed to agree on a major stimulus package for the economy.
He later even said that the United States would “very soon” reopen to business, “much sooner than three or four months as someone suggested. Much earlier ”.
For the city of New York alone, the mayor called for the urgent dispatch of “hundreds of respirators and hundreds of thousands and then millions of masks”.
“If they don’t start arriving this week, we’ll get to the point where people cannot be saved when they could have been saved,” he warned.
New York is also awaiting help from the National Guard and the US Army Corps of Engineers to install additional hospital beds.
The Javits Center conference center in Manhattan is to be transformed into a hospital with a capacity of 1,000 beds, pending the conversion of some hotels, now deprived of tourists.
Cuomo, who went there on Monday, said he hoped it would be ready within “a week to 10 days.”
The governor also signed an executive order requiring New York hospitals to increase their capacity by 50% – to reach 75,000 beds – while calling on them to aim for 100%.
A hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, with a capacity of 1000 beds, is also due to leave for New York in two weeks, according to the Minister of Defense Mark Esper.
“Nervousness”
New Yorkers, accustomed to traffic jams and crowds, were adapting as best they could to this new reality made up of almost deserted streets, stopped construction sites, closed schools or drawn iron curtains.
Buses and yellow taxis continued to circulate, in particular to allow health professionals and emergency services to work, but often ran empty.
Christian Hofer, 42, the father of a family of two who is very organized in the face of the epidemic, said he was struggling to stay calm.
“I go through a whole range of emotions, ranging from nervousness to a feeling of absurdity: I have seen a meme (comic editing, Editor’s note) on the internet that said, Our grandparents have been called to war, we are called to stay on the sofa … It helps to put things in perspective, ”he told AFP.
“I do tele-therapy with my patients, I had never done that before,” said Lauren, a psychologist, who only gave her first name. “I try to give them calming things to do, to tell them that they are not alone, and to make myself more available.”
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