Hospitalisation rates and reported deaths from the novel coronavirus continued to decrease in New York State on Sunday as Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state appears to be past a plateau of coronavirus cases.
The downward trend in coronavirus hospitalisations comes as a welcome relief for New York State, the epicentre of United States (U.S.) outbreak where nearly 14,000 people have died, including 504 people in the last 24 hours.
“If the data holds and if this trend holds, we are past the high point, and all indications at this point are that we are on a descent,” Cuomo said during his daily news conference.
Still the death toll from the new coronavirus in the U.S. passed the 40,000 mark on Sunday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
The death toll has doubled since April 11, indicating a sharp uptick even as there are emerging signs that the rate of infection has started to flatten in key areas, including New York.
The U.S. remains the hardest hit country, with nearly a quarter of all deaths reported globally.
However, methodology and capacity differ across countries, making comparisons inexact.
Cuomo warned that things in his state will not return quickly to pre-pandemic conditions.
“The beast is still alive and the beast can rise up again,” he said, cautioning against easing lockdown measures too soon.
U.S. states are now looking to see when and how they can reopen their economies while preventing a second surge in coronavirus cases.
Governors in several states are saying they worry about reopening their economies from coronavirus shutdowns if testing is still not at the level needed to ensure early identification of resurgent outbreaks.
The lack of testing is “probably the number one problem in America, and has been from the beginning of this crisis,” Maryland Governor Larry Hogan told CNN on Sunday.
Deborah Birx, a key public health official, told CBS the federal government was working to expand testing, conceding that researchers from Harvard University are estimating half a million tests a day are needed to correctly deal with the pandemic.
Vice President Mike Pence said on Fox on Sunday that capacity had reached 150,000 daily tests.
“While our capabilities are there, these important supplies are not,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said during an interview with Meet the Press.
Whitmer, who has faced protests over her strict lockdown measures, said the federal government needs to help supply materials for administering tests like swabs and chemical reagents.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, told the same show that President Donald Trump’s efforts so far to roll out testing were a “failure.”
Last week, the White House announced a three-stage plan to get U.S. states out of shutdowns – on an individualised, gradual and phased-in basis – based on whether areas were seeing sustained declines in their infection rates.
The U.S. now has over 742,000 confirmed cases, though testing shortages persist.
Meanwhile, Governor Jay Inslee has said Trump’s message to liberate states “is basically encouraging people to break the law”.
“To have an American president to encourage people to violate the law, I can’t remember any time in my time in America we have seen such a thing.
“It is dangerous because it could inspire people to ignore things that could save their lives,” Inslee told ABC Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“And it is doubly frustrating to us governors. The president is asking people ‘please ignore Dr Fauci, Dr Birx, please ignore my own guidelines I set forth,’” the governor added.
Trump has repeatedly said in his daily briefings that he did not believe that protests against stay-at-home orders were putting people at risk of spreading or getting COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The president repeated those statements in his briefing on Saturday.
The two officials have steadily upped the ante in their war of words.
Inslee on Friday stated that Trump’s “unhinged rantings and calls for people to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before.”
On Sunday, on “This Week” Inslee said he hoped there could be “restoration of leadership in the White House.”
The exchange came before some Washingtonians planned to gather in Olympia and elsewhere to “defend liberty,” demonstrate the right to assemble and gather signatures for petitions that defend the second amendment and repeal the state’s new comprehensive sex education bill.
While Trump and some states are advocating a quick reopening of the country, Inslee is counselling caution.
He has encouraged people in Washington – the first COVID-19 epicentre in the country – to continue to observe his order to stay home, to stay healthy.
Washington Tribes enacted shelter in place orders even sooner than the governor, with four tribes, the Hoh, Quileute, Quinault, and Makah also closing their reservations to outsiders.
Inslee told Stephanopoulos that he understood the hardship of the stay-at-home order as time stretched on.
“Everybody is very anxious to have a date, you know. They’re wanting to get out and see their grandkids; they’re wanting to get back to work.
“People without a paycheck have extreme anxiety about this and so this is something very, very deep, to have that date to be able to shoot for, obviously, no one has a crystal ball.
“It’s not safe yet to lift precautions. We still haven’t gotten the curve going down, we’re still plateaued.
“We want to make sure we wrestle this beast to the ground.
“And the reason is, you have to get the infections down to a low enough number where you can handle it through very rigorous testing,” Inslee said.
It may be possible to begin opening some parts of the Washington State’s economy in the coming weeks – but it won’t be all at once, Inslee said, adding: “This isn’t a light switch.”
He has likened the more likely to pace of a return to normalcy to turning a dial … slowly.
Inslee also countered Trump on the safety of all vote by mail elections.
Trump has described such balloting as subject to fraud but Inslee called the state’s vote by mail system “tremendous work for democracy because it’s the easiest, safest, most reliable voting there is.
“Our numbers have gone up in voter participation. It’s been a spectacular success.
“When people risk their lives to go physically vote right now with this COVID epidemic, I know there are some in the other party who are afraid more people will vote if we have (mail-in voting).
“That shouldn’coulda fear. It should be a hope.”
