NY GUV ENDS DAILY BRIEFINGS

ALBANY: New York Gov Andrew Cuomo wrapped up a string of more than 100 daily briefings that had become appointment viewing around the nation by declaring that the state has done the impossible in taming the Coronavirus.

The Democratic governor appeared alone behind his desk Friday during a brief address, a departure from his routine of presenting slides with bar graphs of COVID-19 hospitalizations and then taking questions from reporters.

But his message was the same as in recent days: New Yorkers at the epicenter of the US outbreak worked together to fight the virus and now must be on guard for a second wave.

If we could accomplish together what we did here, this impossible task of beating back this deadly virus, then there is nothing that we can’t do, Cuomo said.

And we will be better. And we will be stronger for what we have gone through.

As case numbers climbed, the briefings, usually from the state Capitol, were covered live daily by networks, notably CNN, the employer of the governor’s younger brother and on-air sparring partner, Chris Cuomo.

The elder brother promised just the facts and shared the screen daily with slides loaded with statistics.

But a politician famous for being calculating and controlling frequently provided glimpses of his humanity through 110 briefings with reporters alternately informative, grave, jocular and combative.

On any given day, he would fret over the safety of his 88-year-old mother, expound on the grittiness of New Yorkers, get mistyeyed over the gift of a single mask, defend charges he locked down the state too late, chide young people for not wearing masks, or grieve over daily death tolls that climbed as high as 800.

On Friday, Cuomo said an average of 25 people per day were dying this week.

The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 was 1,284, compared with more than 18,000 at the peak of the outbreak.