NY Pandemic Update : Saturday May 9th

Mr. Cuomo also announced 226 more deaths due to the coronavirus, 10 more than the number reported a day earlier.

New hospitalizations for Covid-19 patients remained relatively flat, with 572 new patients being treated at city hospitals for the coronavirus. On Friday, 604 people were hospitalized, and that number hovered in the 600s this week.

“That number has been infuriatingly constant,” he said. “We would like to see that number dropping at a faster rate that it is currently dropping.”

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Three young children have died in New York of a mysterious, toxic-shock inflammation syndrome with links to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday.

As of Saturday, more than 73 children in New York have been sickened by the rare illness, which has some similarities to Kawasaki disease and was publicly identified for the first time earlier this week, NY Times reported.

The state will be working with the New York Genome Center and Rockefeller University to determine what is causing the illness, which Governor Cuomo described on Saturday as “truly disturbing.”

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Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of a new initiative to expand access to testing in low-income communities and communities of color. The state is partnering with Northwell Health to establish an initial 24 temporary testing sites at churches in predominately minority communities in downstate New York to build on the state’s network of downstate testing sites.

The results of the state’s diagnostic testing and antibody testing surveys show that low-income and minority communities are suffering the most from COVID-19. The largest statewide antibody testing survey of 15,000 New Yorkers found a greater infection rate in communities of color. Additionally, the state’s comprehensive survey of all newly admitted patients hospitalized for COVID-19 found communities of color are most impacted and of the 21 zip codes with the most new COVID-19 hospitalizations, 20 have greater than average black and/or Latino populations. A deeper look into two of the most impacted communities in the survey, in Brooklyn and the Bronx, found communities of color are also lower-income and have a greater percentage of COVID-19 hospitalizations and infections than New York City overall.

Today’s testing expansion initiative builds on previous state actions to address inequalities and deliver for those most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, the state has partnered with Ready Responders to bring healthcare services, including COVID-19 diagnostic testing, to residents of public housing in New York City and delivered one million cloth masks and 10,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to public housing.

The Governor also announced the preliminary results of the state’s antibody testing survey of more than 1,300 transit workers in the New York City region show 14.2 percent have COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City.