Governor Andrew Cuomo says New York’s efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus aren’t working. The governor says latest projections as of Tuesday are that the number of cases is doubling every three days. He says that means New York will now need more than 140,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients at peak instead of the 110,000 the state thought would be necessary. The State normally has 52,000 hospital beds available.
Cuomo says the peak of infection is 14 to 21 days away, faster than expected.
Cuomo says the state is doing all it can on every level to “flatten the curve” and reduce the increasing number of infections. He says testing has increased to the highest level in the United States. But the governor says all options to control the spread of the virus have now been exhausted.
New drug testing trials are beginning Tuesday in New York for the most seriously ill patients, with cooperation from the FDA and President Trump.C
Cuomo spoke from the Javits Convention Center in New York City, which is being converted to a 1,000 bed emergency hospital. Three others are being set up downstate, and the governor has ordered all hospitals to figure out how to increase their beds by 50 percent by putting multiple patients into a room and converting other spaces into hospital wards.
The state also desperately needs ventilators to keep sick patients alive. The governor says they will try an experimental technique that lets one ventilator serve two patients.