Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended New York’s shutdown by another month, to May 15th. The governor says he doesn’t know what comes after that, except he hopes New York and its six neighboring states will have a regional restart plan for their ecomonies by then.
Cuomo doubled down on his executive order for all New Yorkers to wear masks when in public and unable to socially distance from others, adding that people should wear masks in buses, trains, cabs and Uber or Lyft cars along with the drivers. Cuomo also thanked New Yorkers for voluntarily abiding by his recommendations.
Cuomo said the restart plan will be progressive, and will consider what service a business provides, how essential it is, how risky it is and how it can be done more safely. He says what’s really needed to do it right is a massive scale-up of coronavirus testing, which is going to be hard to do in a month.
Governor Cuomo says New York’s total number of coronavirus hospitalizations is down, and ICU admissions are significantly down. Two-thousand people still went to the hospitals yesterday or were diagnosed with the disease, and more than 600 people died. that level remains flat or declining slightly, evidence that New York succeeded in “flattening the curve” of growth in coronavirus infections.