New York — Rising coronavirus cases and the upcoming holiday season are a bad combination, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today.
“That is a dangerous situation,” he said during a press conference in New York City. “And that is exactly where we are going.”
If the state’s residents aren’t careful, New York could easily face a return to the conditions it saw in the spring, Cuomo said. If hospitalizations continue increasing at their current rate, the total will be over 6,000 in about three weeks.
On Staten Island in New York City, hospitals are already running low on beds, Cuomo said. The state is opening an emergency Covid-19 facility in the borough to help.
“The emergency rooms and hospitals were like battle zones,” Cuomo said of the situation in the state in March and April. “How do we not remember that? How doesn’t that chasten us and frighten us? It frightens me.
“We have to remember that. Because if we are not careful, we will go back there.”
In response to rising cases of the virus, Cuomo added several new clusters zones in parts of New York today. He added an orange zone and expanded a yellow zone in Onondaga County.
The cluster zones are meant to help slow spread of the virus through new restrictions in targeted areas.
How the state fares the next few weeks depends on New Yorkers, Cuomo said.
“There is no predetermined result here,” he said. “It is a result of our actions, period.”
Statewide, the percentage of people testing positive for the virus on Sunday was 3.08%. The seven-day average is now 2.93%.
The seven-day average rate in Onondaga County’s yellow zone is now 4.99%, down from 5.12% yesterday and 6.58% the week of Nov. 8.
The positive rate in Central New York as a whole was 3.6% on Sunday, up from 2.6% on Saturday. The region includes Cayuga, Cortland, Onondaga, Oswego and Madison counties.
Hospitalizations due to the virus in New York totaled 2,724 on Sunday, up 162. Hospitalizations have increased over 120% in the last three weeks, Cuomo said.
They are still well below their peak of over 18,000 in mid-April.
A total of 545 people were in intensive care units with the virus yesterday, up 43, and 249 were intubated, up 15.
Another 33 people in New York died due to the virus on Sunday. The statewide death toll is now 26,390.
The state confirmed 5,906 new cases of the virus yesterday and conducted 191,489 more tests. New York now has 602,120 confirmed cases.
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