Mayor de Blasio saw a “mixed bag” in New York City’s fight against coronavirus as the number of new hospital admissions and intensive care patients increased.
“We got a mixed bag today,” de Blasio said at a remote briefing. “We want to see us get to consistent progress … We still have a ways to go.”
The city is looking for declining numbers in three areas — new hospital admissions, ICU patients and percentage of positive tests — before some coronavirus restrictions are lifted. The city reports the three indicators with a two-day lag.
The number of people admitted to both public and private hospitals with COVID-19 symptoms increased to 78 on Monday, up from the 52 total new admissions on Sunday.
De Blasio said this was “hell of a lot better number than where we were just a few weeks ago.” There were 850 new admissions to hospitals on March 31.
There were 561 people in ICUs at 11 public hospitals on Monday, up by 11 patients compared to the day before. The number of ICU patients at public hospitals reached its peak on April 14 with 887 people, de Blasio said.
Citywide, 13% of those tested came back positive as of Monday, a one-point drop from Sunday. On April 12, 61% of those tested citywide were positive for coronavirus.
“Overall trends continue good, today’s results are not what we’re looking for,” de Blasio said. “Let’s double down on the things that are working so we can have more of the good days and start to string them together and move towards the first steps of our restart.”
The city wants all three indicators to go down for 10 consecutive days or over a period of two weeks, and fall below certain levels, before some coronavirus closures end.
The goal is to reach less than 200 new hospital admissions for coronavirus symptoms, and fewer than 375 people in critical care in public hospitals. The city also wants to see fewer than 15% of the citywide tests come back positive.
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