New York welcomes arrival of hospital ship, epidemic accelerates in the United States

In a race against time to face the peak of the epidemic, New York welcomed the arrival of a 1,000-bed military hospital ship on Monday, as the disease spreads in the United States, pushing Donald Trump to extend the containment recommendations until the end of April.

The USNS Comfort, with a capacity of 1,000 beds and 12 operating theaters, left Virginia on Saturday, arrived at around 10:30 a.m. local (2:30 p.m. GMT). It should make it possible to unload New York hospitals of patients requiring intensive care not linked to the coronavirus.

“The fact that the Navy is there, that the Army is there to help New York at a time when our city is in need, is very important,” said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, then as the ship entered Manhattan Harbor, several dozen people watching on the wharf and others at their windows.

“For the people of the city who have been through a lot in recent weeks, it lifts their spirits. It’s very moving for all of us, we need help, ”added the mayor on CNN.

While New York City, the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States, now has more than 33,000 cases and 776 deaths, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University, an emergency hospital set up in the conference center of the Javits Center was also due to become operational on Monday, with a capacity of 2,900 beds.

Four other sites across the city have been identified to unload hospitals, overwhelmed in recent days by the influx of patients.

“The virus has been one step ahead of us since day one,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said on MSNBC on Monday. “We are still two, three, four weeks away (from the peak of the epidemic), depending on the projection model used. You have to prepare for the peak, have the material for the peak. Because that’s where the system will collapse ”.

Bill de Blasio stressed that the city still needed urgently, just to hold the week, some 400 artificial respirators and reinforcements of medical personnel.

“I asked the president, the federal government to provide us with these 400 (respirators) immediately so that we can hold out until Sunday,” he added. “One in four American cases is here, we warned them, they had the time, now they have to find them.”

Work stoppages

The United States is now the country with the most confirmed cases – more than 143,000 Monday morning, according to Johns Hopkins – and more than 2,500 dead.

This worsening of the situation prompted President Donald Trump to reconsider on Sunday his attempts to ease the restrictive measures by April 12 to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

He admitted that the first power was still far from the peak of the pandemic, while one of his advisers, Dr Anthony Fauci, indicated that the virus could kill up to 200,000 in the United States.

The well-respected Doctor Fauci said on Monday that he had no trouble convincing the president to extend the recommendations of confinement and social distancing beyond mid-April, after showing him the data showing the expected evolution of the ‘epidemic.

The US president initially downplayed the epidemic and has since oscillated between a very dark tone on the development of the situation and a desire to restart the economy quickly, while the number of unemployed already exceeds three million and is expected to rise. worsen in the coming weeks.

Even companies deemed essential that are running at full speed, such as the online shopping giant Amazon, in demand by Americans mostly confined to their homes, are in difficulty by the epidemic.

For example, workers at Amazon’s huge warehouse on Staten Island – which usually employs around 2,000 people – have scheduled a work stoppage on Monday to protest the continuation of their activities when several employees have tested positive for the virus, one of the organizers of this action, Christian Smalls, posted on Twitter.

Employees of the fresh produce delivery company Instacart were also planning a work stoppage to denounce the lack of safety of its deliverers.

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