It was not the average Easter Sunday in New York as the death toll from COVID-19 reached 10,000 officially, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday morning.
But that does not mean there is no light at the end of the tunnel for New Yorkers as cases have officially leveled off in less of a curve and more of a plateau, as the governor has discussed in recent days. Cuomo stressed the new high watermark in deaths being on a “high holy day” being the salt in the wound.
“The terrible news is as terrible as it gets and the worst news I’ve had to deliver to the people of this state as the governor of New York and the worst news I’ve had to live with on a personal level; number of deaths is 671. Not as bad as it has been in the past and basically flat at a horrific level of pain and grief and sorrow … these are people who passed away on Easter Sunday,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo compared restarting the economy to opening a valve slowly and in coordination with testing data. The pace at which the state allows life and commerce to commence will be a “delicate balance” which could sabotage all progress made thus far if done too fast, according to Cuomo.
“What are we doing on reopening? We are easing isolation, we want to increase economic activity, that will happen basically through a recalibration of who are our essential workers,” Cuomo said. “You’ll start to open that valve on the economic activity … Do it carefully, do it slowly and do it intelligently.”
The pandemic will not be over until health officials tell the public that there is a vaccine and that it can be deployed across the public.
Northwell Health, touted as one of New York’s best resources for not just expanding and standardizing care for COVID-19 patients across the state, will be following Federal Drug Administration guidelines to develop a plasma therapy solution through its research arm, the Feinstein Institute.
Coronavirus patients who have tested positive and recovered can donate their plasma at New York Blood Center locations, according to Northwell, after sighing up through their registry here.
This story first appeared on amny.com.
