Coronavirus Death toll notes: The number of confirmed US coronavirus cases hit 706,779 this morning — and nationwide deaths now total 37,079, the latest data indicate. As of the most recent count, 3,574,392 US residents have been tested.

Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the outbreak, noted that there are a total of 2,261,631 confirmed cases and 154,789 deaths worldwide.

New York City presently has 131,661 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 13,202 fatalities.

Notes From Cuomo Briefing 

• “If you look at the past three days, you could argue we are past the plateau and starting to descend,” Mr. Cuomo said. “So we’re not at the plateau anymore, but we’re still not in a good position.”
• New York governor Andrew Cuomo says the net change in total hospitalizations are down over the last three days. ICU admissions are down, as are intubations across the state
• “Doctors will tell you that the emergency rooms have fewer people in them,” Mr. Cuomo said. “They were at max capacity for a long time.”
• He adds there were 540 deaths in the past 24-hour period, down from 630 the day before: “It’s not as high as it was, but still: 540 people died yesterday.”
• The death toll included 504 people who had died in city hospitals and 36 in nursing homes
• “Nursing homes are the single biggest fear in all of this,” the governor said. “Vulnerable people in one place — it is the feeding frenzy for this virus, despite everything we can do and the best efforts of people working in those nursing homes,” the governor said.
• The most powerful part of his briefing was these statements: “The emotion in this country is as high as I can recall,” Cuomo says, “People are frustrated. We’re anxious, we’re scared, we’re angry. We’ve never been through this before. And on every level, this is a terrible experience. It’s disorienting, it threatens you to your core. It makes you reflect on your whole life and it really has … it’s mentally very difficult, it’s emotionally difficult, economically it’s disastrous. The market goes down, your retirement funds go down, you’re not getting a paycheck. It is as tumultuous a time as we have ever seen. But in the midst of this, there is no time for politics. How does the situation get worse and get worse quickly? If you politicize all that emotion. We cannot go there.”
• “The challenge is now bringing this(testing)  up to scale,” he says. “We did 500,000 tests in a month. That’s great news. The bad news is it’s only a fraction of what you need. The more you test, the more information, the more you can reopen society.”
• Cuomo stayed away from his spat on Friday with Trump. “In the midst of this, there is no time for politics,” Mr. Cuomo said. “How does this situation get worse and get worse quickly? If you politicize all that emotion. We cannot go there.” “I’m not asking the federal government to do more than they need to,” he added. “But we do need their coordination, we need their partnership.”