New York State, the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic in
the United States, continued to record the highest count of daily deaths from
COVID-19 as a staggering number of 630 people died in a 24-hour period and
Governor Andrew Cuomo said the outbreak in the state could peak in about seven
days.

IMAGE: Healthcare workers load a person into
an ambulance outside the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center during the outbreak of
the coronavirus disease in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New
York. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
The state had recorded the
highest single increase in the number of deaths from novel coronavirus in a
single day between April 2 and 3 when 562 people had died, one person dying
from the viral infection almost every two-and-a-half minutes.
In the 24 hours since April
4, the death toll grew to 630, "all-time increase" up to a total of
3,565, up from 2,935 on Friday morning, Cuomo said.
The daily death toll in New
York continues to grow at record numbers as the state remains the most impacted
in the US from coronavirus.
Coronavirus cases in New
York State now stand at 1,13,704, out of the country's total number of 312,146.
New Jersey, the second most impacted state in the US, has about 30,000 COVID-19
cases. New York City alone has 63,306 coronavirus patients, up from 57,169
the previous 24 hours, and 2,624 deaths.
Cuomo said the apex in the
state, the point where the number of infections on a daily basis hits the high
point, is still about 4-8 days away.
"We have been talking
about hitting that apex, the high point of the curve. I call it the battle of
the mountaintop. That's going to be the number one point of engagement of the
enemy," he said.
"But our reading of
the projections is we're somewhere in the seven-day range, four, five, six
seven, eight day range. Nobody can give you a specific number, which makes it
very frustrating to plan when they can't give you a specific number or a
specific date, but we're in that range," Cuomo said.
"We are not yet at the
apex. Part of me would like to be at the apex and just let's do it. But there's
part of me that says it's good that we're not at the apex because we're not yet
ready for the apex either, still working on the capacity of the (healthcare) system,"
the governor said.
Cuomo has expressed anger
over the short supply of essential medical equipment for healthcare
professionals to help them deal with the surge in coronavirus cases across the
state and the country.
He said personal protective
equipment such as masks, gowns and face shields are in short supply in New York
as they are across the country and there is need for companies to make these
materials.
"It is unbelievable to
me that in the New York State, in the United States of America, we can't make
these materials and that we are all shopping China to try to get these
materials and we're all competing against each other," he had said
earlier.
Cuomo said on Saturday that
the state has 85,000 volunteers, including 22,000 from outside the state, and
he will also be signing an executive order to allow medical students who were
slated to graduate to begin practising, supplementing the state's healthcare
professional capacity.
On ventilators, he said the
state had ordered 17,000 but there was not enough supply in the federal
stockpile to meet this growing demand across the state.
"China is remarkably
the repository for all of these orders - ventilators, PPE, it all goes back to
China, which long term we have to figure out why we wound up in this situation
where we don't have the manufacturing capacity in this country," he said,
adding, "New York has been shopping in China."
The Chinese government
helped facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators that will arrive at the JFK
Airport in the city, he said, as he thanked the Chinese government, Alibaba
head Jack Ma, the Jack Ma Foundation, Alibaba co-founder co-founder Joe Tsai
and China's Consul General Huang Ping.
In addition, the state of
Oregon would deliver 140 ventilators to New York.
Cuomo has signed an
executive order allowing the state to redistribute ventilators and personal
protective equipment from hospitals, private sector companies and institutions
that don't currently need them and redeploy the equipment to other hospitals
with the highest need.
Those institutions will
either get their ventilator back or they will be reimbursed and paid for their
ventilator so they can buy a new ventilator.
The 2,500-bed facility at
the Javits Convention Centre, which was supposed to be used for non-COVID patients,
will now be used as COVID-positive facility.
"The federal
government will staff that and the federal government with equip that. That is
a big deal because that 2,500-bed facility will relieve a lot of pressure on
the downstate system as a significant number of beds and that facility has to
make that transition quickly and that's what we're focused on," Cuomo
said.
Cuomo emphasised that he
wants the pandemic to end as soon as possible as it is taking an unprecedented
strain on life.
"I want this to be all
over. It's only gone on for 30 days since our first case. It feels like an
entire lifetime. I think we all feel the same. This stresses this country, this
state, in a way that nothing else has frankly, in my lifetime. It stresses us
on every level. The economy is stressed, the social fabric is stressed, the
social systems are stressed, transportation is stressed," he said.
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