New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on the nation to rally around New York on Monday, as the state’s coronavirus death toll climbed above 1,200, with 253 victims in the past 24 hours alone.
Cuomo reported the grim numbers during a briefing at Midtown’s Javits Center, which is being transformed into a field hospital amid a terrifying uptick in COVID-19 cases.
“This is a deadly, serious situation,” Cuomo said after confirming 1,218 coronavirus deaths in New York, accounting for nearly half of all fatalities in the U.S. “The virus does not discriminate. It attacks everyone and everywhere.”
The governor added, “This is a war.”
New York City has been hit the worst, with 790 deaths and 36,221 confirmed cases as of Monday morning, according to officials.
Statewide, Cuomo said 66,497 New Yorkers have tested positive. More than 9,500 people are currently hospitalized, with 2,352 in intensive care, he added.
Based on the latest tally, about 10 people died every hour between Sunday afternoon and Monday afternoon.
“That’s a lot of loss, that’s a lot of pain, that’s a lot of tears, that’s a lot of grief that people all across this state are feeling,” Cuomo said.
He also advised other state leaders to not put their heads in the sand and urged them to send healthcare workers to New York in an all-hands-on-deck bid to contain the virus.
“Whether it’s Detroit, it’s New Orleans, it will work its way across the country,” he said.
Some nurses and medical volunteers from other states began arriving in New York on Monday to help out.
The governor thanked President Donald Trump for sending the USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed naval hospital ship, to New York to alleviate hospitals overrun with coronavirus patients.
The ship arrived Monday morning at Pier 90 in Hell’s Kitchen and will be able to start accepting patients Tuesday. The ship will accommodate non-coronavirus patients so city hospitals can focus on treating people suffering from the respiratory infection.
Cuomo stayed clear of rebuking Trump’s outrageous Sunday suggestion that doctors and staff at New York City hospitals were stealing medical supplies and taking them “out the back door.”
“I don’t know what that means, I don’t know what he’s trying to say,” the governor said. “If he wants to make an accusation, then let him make an accusation, but I don’t know what he’s trying to say by inference.”
Instead of bashing Trump, Cuomo made a renewed call for “unity” and said this moment requires the U.S. to transcend politics.
“We have a national crisis,” he said. “There is no politics. There is no red and blue. It’s red, white and blue.”
