N.Y. governor blasts ‘selfish’ residents

The governor of New York on Wednesday cracked down even harder on public gatherings in the face of the coronavirus, calling residents who disregarded stay-at-home rules "selfish" as California's governor warned his state will run out of hospital beds by next month.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told New York City police to more aggressively enforce rules for social distancing as deaths in the state shot up to nearly 2,000.

"Young people must get this message, and they still have not gotten the message, you still see too many situations with too much density by young people," said Cuomo, who said models showed the outbreak worsening until the end of April.

Cuomo said he was closing playgrounds, swing sets, basketball courts and similar spaces, while open spaces in parks would remain open for now.

He sounded vexed by reports of crowds gathering at a Manhattan pier to watch the arrival of the U.S. Navy hospital ship, the Comfort.

"How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own," Cuomo said.

All told, 4,529 people have died across the United States from COVID19 so far, according to a Reuters tally, with more than 205,000 cases reported.

White House medical experts have forecast that even with strict observance of stay-at-home orders imposed in 36 states and the District of Columbia, some 100,000 to 240,000 people could die from the respiratory disease.

Since 2010, the flu has killed between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 19181919 flu pandemic killed 675,000 in the United States, according to the CDC.

While New York remains the center of the pandemic, states across the country experienced a surge of cases, including California, Michigan, Florida, and New Jersey.

Even with signs that strict stay-athome rules are slowing the outbreak, and the Comfort's sister ship, the USNS Mercy, parked off Los Angeles, California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned the state would run out of hospital beds within six weeks.

"We are in a completely different place than the state of New York and I hope we will continue to be but we won't unless people continue to practice physical distancing and do their part," Newsom said at a news conference in Sacramento.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont announced what he called a tragic milestone as the virus claimed its youngest victim to date, a six-week-old baby.

"It just is a reminder that nobody is safe from this virus," Lamont said at a field house at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, where more than 200 hospital beds have been set up to handle an expected surge of COVID-19 patients.

With rent and mortgage payments due on Wednesday, the first day of the month, Americans unable to work during the pandemic struggled to make ends meet and talked of uncertainty in the weeks ahead.

Alfa Cristina Morales, 21, lost her job cooking at an Oakland, Calif., coffee shop, along with her health insurance, three weeks ago.

Morales said she had been forced to use money she had saved for a U.S. citizenship application to pay bills, including her April rent. She has applied for unemployment benefits to support herself and her two-year-old son, but that money could take weeks to arrive.

"We're worried that it won't be enough," she said.