Apple’s death toll at 20,000

Grim mark in worst-hit city

New York City’s coronavirus death toll has passed another tragic milestone, with more than 20,000 confirmed or suspected fatalities now tallied — thousands more than any other city in the world.

As of Tuesday after- noon, 15,101 confirmed city deaths had been reported, in addition to 5,136 probable fatalities — in which the deceased showed symptoms of COVID-19 but were not officially tested — for a cumulative toll of 20,237, according to city statistics.

“As we’ve reached this very painful milestone, we all have to remember these are human beings and families,” Mayor de Blasio said Tuesday at a press briefing.

Added Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Health, “The number of new Yorkers that have died because of COVID-19 really is staggering.”

The Big Apple’s death toll has easily outpaced that of any other city in even the world’s hardest-hit nations, including Italy, Spain and China.

By comparison, Italy’s northern region of Lombardy, the most impacted in that country, had suffered about 14,000 fatalities as of Tuesday, or about two-thirds that of New York City, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Empire State’s confirmed death toll, meanwhile, hit 21,845 after 195 new fatalities were recorded in the 24-hour period ending at midnight Tuesday.

Unlike New York City, the state does not include presumed deaths in its count.

Even as the human toll continued to rise, Gov. Cuomo tried to head off a fiscal crisis, imploring Congress to afford New York some $61 billion in aid in its next bailout package. Without the 11-figure cash infusion, the state can face 20 percent cuts in funding to schools, hospitals and other vital public services, Cuomo said.

“When you don’t fund the state, who does the state fund?” asked Cuomo during a briefing at the Binghamton University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in upstate Johnson City, among the Empire State regions cleared to begin reopening later this week.

“That’s police, firefighters,” he said. “You want me to cut hospitals?

“Hospitals are the nurses and the doctors who just got us through this and everyone celebrates as heroes.”