US tops China in deaths
Trump tells public to brace for ‘rough two-week period’
NEW YORK — The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China’s official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
The crisis hit close to home for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who reported teary-eyed that his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, was infected.
The governor pronounced the disaster unlike any other the city has weathered: “This is ongoing and the duration itself is debilitating and exhausting and depressing.”
According to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, the United States had more than 188,000 infections, with more dead than China’s official toll of about 3,300. More than 6,000 people in the U.S. have recovered from the illness.
At the daily White House briefing, the administration on Tuesday projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic if current social distancing guidelines are maintained. President Donald Trump called American efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus “a matter of life and death” and urged the public to heed his administration’s social distancing guidelines.
Trump called on Americans to brace themselves for a “rough two-week period.”
“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” Trump said. “We’re going to go through a very tough two weeks.”
The comments came after Trump announced Sunday that he was extending to April 30 the social distancing guidelines that urged Americans to cease social gatherings, work from home, suspend onsite learning at schools and more in a nationwide effort to stem the spread of the virus.
New York was the nation’s deadliest hot spot, with about 1,550 deaths statewide, most of them in New York City, which braced for things to get much worse in the coming weeks.
A 1,000-bed emergency hospital set up at the mammoth Javits Convention Center began taking noncoronavirus patients to help relieve the city’s overwhelmed health system. A Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds that arrived Monday was expected to begin accepting patients Tuesday.
The indoor tennis center that is the site of the U.S. Open tournament is being
turned into a hospital as well.
The city has also worked to bring in 250 out-of-town ambulances and 500 paramedics to deal with a crush of emergency calls.
The fire commissioner said ambulances are responding to double their normal daily total of 3,000 calls to 911.
In addition, New York authorities sought to bring on more volunteer health care professionals and hoped to have them on board by Thursday. Nearly 80,000 former nurses, doctors and others are said to be stepping forward, and the governor said officials are doing background checks for disciplinary actions and otherwise making sure they are fit for duty.
Around the city, workers in protective gear have been seen putting bodies of victims into refrigerated trailers. At some hospitals, like Lenox Hill in Manhattan, the trucks are parked on city streets, along sidewalks and in front of apartments. Cars and buses passed by as corpses were loaded by forklift at Brooklyn Hospital Center. People captured some of the scenes by cellphone.
As for Chris Cuomo, the TV newsman tweeted that he has suffered from fever, chills and shortness of breath and will be doing his shows from his basement,
where he has quarantined himself.
“Luckily we caught it early enough,” the governor said. “But it’s my family, it’s your family, it’s all of our families. But this virus is that insidious, and we must keep that all in mind.”
In the smoldering hot spot of Louisiana, the death toll climbed to 239.
And Tony Spell, a pastor charged with a misdemeanor for holding six church services in violation of the governor’s ban on public gatherings, said he would continue to defy the law “because the Lord told us to.”
Louisiana and Michigan were running out of ventilators, despite promises by the White House of more equipment.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the hard-hit New Orleans region is set to run out of breathing machines by the weekend and hospital beds a week later. The Trump administration has committed to sending 150 ventilators from the national stockpile, but the state hasn’t received an arrival date. Michigan said it needs 5,000 to 10,000 more.
Meanwhile, a senior military general said the Pentagon has not yet delivered any of the 2,000 ventilators it offered to the Department of Health and Human Services two weeks ago because HHS has asked it to wait while the agency determines where the devices should go.