NY death toll over 10K as fresh hot spots lessen

— New York state’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 on Monday even as the lack of fresh hot spots in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world yielded a ray of optimism and fueled discussions about how some places might begin to reopen.

The brunt of the disease has been felt most heavily in New York, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, but grim projections of a virus that would spread with equal ferocity to other corners of America and the world had not yet materialized after over a month.

The statewide death toll in populous states like Florida and Pennsylvania was on par with individual counties outside New York City. As Colorado deaths surpassed 300 on Monday, Gov. Jared Polis compared that figure to New York’s thousands and called it “a tragic indication of our success in Colorado.”

Officials around the world worried that halting quarantine and social-distancing measures could easily undo the hardearned progress that those steps have achieved in slowing the spread.

Still, there were signs countries were looking in that direction. Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs, and a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown restrictions. Governors on both coasts of the U.S. announced that they would join forces to come up with a coordinated reopening at some point, setting the stage for a conflict with President Donald Trump, who asserted that he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to reopen.

New York saw a few positive signs Monday at the same time that it reached another bleak milestone. It marked the first time in a week that the daily toll dipped below 700. Almost 2,000 people were newly hospitalized with the virus Sunday, though once discharges and deaths are accounted for, the numWASHINGTON ber of people hospitalized has flattened to just under 19,000.

“This virus is very good at what it does. It is a killer,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday during a state Capitol news briefing.

In the U.S., about half of the more than 23,000 deaths reported are in the New York metropolitan area. Meanwhile, tracking maps maintained by Johns Hopkins University show a dense patchwork of coronavirus cases along the Northeast corridor, as well as significant outbreaks corresponding to other major metropolitan areas — though nothing on the scale of what New York has endured.

Dr. Sebastian Johnston, a professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, said it appeared that COVID-19 had peaked in much of Europe, including France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the U.K. He was worried the virus might now start to take off in countries across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. There’s also concern about Russia.