(New York) Authorities in New York, the US epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, which an official compared to Italy, on Monday called on Donald Trump to declare national coercive containment and order the private sector to manufacture emergency masks and respirators.
Posted on March 23, 2020 at 10:24 a.m.
Updated at 4:13 p.m.
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The first American metropolis, economic capital of the country with 8.6 million inhabitants, had more than 12,000 cases on Monday morning, or nearly a third of American cases.
Faced with this increasingly dramatic situation, anxiety mounted among the inhabitants of this city, usually a symbol of hyperactivity and decibels.
The streets were eerily 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 if violators don’t. are exposed for the moment to no sanction.
“These containment measures (closing non-essential activities and forcing people to stay at home, editor’s note), that New York and California have taken, must be everywhere” in the United States, insisted Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We have to take these extreme measures.”
“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, not coercive, announced last week. , for 15 days.
Both de Blasio and the governor of New York state have re-launched 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 other countries. .
“Yes, it’s an assertion of government power over private companies, so what?” It’s a national emergency, ”said Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo. “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 massive plan to boost the economy.
For the city of New York alone, the mayor called for the urgent dispatch of “hundreds of respirators and hundreds of thousands 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, now deserted, must in particular be transformed into a hospital with a capacity of 1,000 beds, pending the conversion of certain hotels, now deprived of tourists.
Mr. Cuomo, who visited the Javits Center on Monday, said he hoped he 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 1,000-bed hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, is also due to depart for New York in two weeks, according to Secretary 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, father of a family of two children yet very organized in the face of the epidemic, said he had trouble staying calm.
“I go through a whole range of emotions, ranging from nervousness to a feeling of absurdity: I saw a ‘meme’ (comic edit, Editor’s note) on the internet that said, ‘Our grandparents were Called to war, we are called to stay on the couch ”… It helps put things in perspective,” he told AFP.
“I do teletherapy with my patients, I had never done that before,” explained 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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