NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo said 778 New Yorkers died in the past day of coronavirus, a toll that leaped back up Tuesday even as other key metrics showed hopeful signs of dropping.
After a big drop the day before, the death toll in the hardest-hit state jumped up to near its record high of 799 last week.
“That number is up and to me that is the most painful number,” Cuomo said.
The governor revealed charts showing the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in the state dropped for the first time since the pandemic gripped the state.
The number of patients in intensive care and those being placed on ventilators, many of which do not survive, also has dipped.
Cuomo suggested that the pandemic is starting to get under control in the worst affected areas of New York City and surrounding suburbs.
But he again warned against relaxing social distancing rules too quickly, which could spark a new spike in cases and deaths.
“The worst scenario would be if we did all of this, we got that number down,” he said. “And then we go to reopen and we reopen too fast … and we see that number go up again.
The governor trumpeted the coalition of seven northeast states he has forged to come with a common plan or plans to help the region reopen safely.
He scoffed at the idea that he and others are “hyper cautious” about reopening.
“Go look at other countries that went through exactly this, started to reopen and then they saw the infection rate go back up again,” he said. “So let’s at least learn from past mistakes.”
Offering a memory from his childhood days at a Catholic schoolboy at St. Gerard Majella’s School in Queens, Cuomo insisted he has no stomach for a political scrap with President Donald Trump, who claims he has “absolute power” to order states to reopen whenever he wants.
The governor told of looking at a poster with the slogan “Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came.” Cuomo recalled asking a priest how you could have a war without soldiers.
“That’s the point,” Cuomo recalled the priest replying. “Sometimes it is better to walk away from a fight than engage it.”
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