A dozen tents erected in Central Park by the charity Samaritan’s Purse, in New York on March 31, 2020 / AFP
New York, the epicenter of the American epidemic and already metamorphosed under the effect of the new coronavirus, was preparing for the worst on Tuesday, the American president warning that the United States would face two “very very painful” weeks.
The White House has estimated that the disease will kill between 100,000 and 240,000 in the country if current restrictions are respected, compared to 1.5 to 2.2 million without any measures.
“We are going through two very difficult weeks,” Donald Trump said at a press conference, gravely. “It will be two very, very painful weeks,” he insisted.
Covid-19 has killed a record 865 people nationwide in the past 24 hours, according to the benchmark Johns Hopkins University count Tuesday night.
This strong acceleration, close to the record recorded on March 27 in Italy (+969 deaths), brings the total death toll to 3,873 in the United States, the country in the world with by far the largest number of recorded cases (188,172).
The majority of the deaths are recorded in New York, which has been forced to transform in order to treat tens of thousands of potential coronavirus patients.
A dozen tents erected in Central Park since Sunday were preparing for Tuesday to accommodate up to 70 patients sick with the virus from nearby Mount Sinai hospital.
“We see films like + Contagion + and we think it will never happen, so seeing it for real is really surreal,” says Joanne Dunbar, 57, who came to witness the transformation of this iconic Manhattan location. .
After eight days of work carried out by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the Javits Center conference center in Manhattan is now operational, with nearly 3,000 beds for patients not affected by the coronavirus, for allow hospitals to focus on the epidemic.
A few streets further on, the imposing white silhouette of the military hospital ship Comfort, which arrived Monday with a capacity of 1,000 beds, stands out in the middle of the skyscrapers.
Other sites have been identified across America’s first metropolis to serve as hospitals, including one of the buildings at the Flushing Meadows tennis complex in the Queens district, as well as hotels, intended to accommodate infected people. but not seriously ill.
New York State as a whole, which had nearly 76,000 cases and 1,550 dead on Tuesday, is racing against time to increase its hospital capacity before the peak of the epidemic, expected by now ” seven to 21 days, ”according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who indicated Tuesday that his brother, a CNN presenter, was also infected.
The governor called on New Yorkers to “calibrate their expectations so as not to be disappointed every day when they wake up”, seeing the situation worsen.
– Palpable concern –
“New Yorkers are in a difficult situation, and we are trying to do the best to open places in order to alleviate the increase in the number of cases”, underlined on CNN the doctor Anthony Fauci, expert in infectious diseases who advises Donald Trump on this crisis.
Donald Trump during a press conference on the new coronavirus, at the White House on March 31, 2020 / AFP
In this metropolis which has never been so deserted and silent, where now resonates in the evening, as in many European cities, applause saluting the nursing staff, the concern is more and more palpable.
Masks are everywhere and buildings have “never been cleaned so much,” said Joel Quesada, a cleaner at a Manhattan building complex, where he went from 40 to 55 hours per week.
Larry Grossman, director of a supermarket, said to have lost in recent days 14 of its 75 employees, “either sick or afraid to come to work”, despite the protective glass panels installed at each checkout.
If New York is more than ever the American epicenter of the epidemic, the whole of the world’s leading power now lives in concern, with a number of deaths now higher than the official Chinese toll (3,305 dead).
A US National Guard soldier on March 31, 2020 in front of the Javits Center in Manhattan / AFP
More than three in four Americans are now under strict containment orders. Most major cities are affected, and outbreaks that have appeared in recent days, in Chicago or New Orleans, are worsening.
Even rural states, such as Montana, which have very few confirmed cases, are ardently demanding from the federal government masks and test kits, mainly reserved for the moment for the seriously ill and the most vulnerable.
The commander of a US nuclear aircraft carrier anchored in Guam, USS Theodore Roosevelt, faced with rampant contamination, requested permission to evacuate its crew at the Pentagon, which refused.
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