Differing reactions
The Democratic governor was praised by a metropolitan-area hospital association, but elected officials from some areas outside the city objected to the move. Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Reed called the order dangerous and reckless and said it would cost lives.
“Taking our ventilators by force leaves our people without protection and our hospitals unable to save lives today or respond to a coming surge,” he said.
The economic damage from the lockdowns and closings mounted. The U.S. snapped its recordbreaking hiring streak of nearly 10 years when the government reported that employers slashed over 700,000 jobs last month. But the true picture is far worse, because the figures do not include the last two weeks, when 10 million thrown-out-of-work Americans applied for unemployment benefits.
Worldwide, confirmed infections rose past 1 million and deaths topped 58,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say both numbers are seriously undercounted because of the lack of testing, mild cases that were missed and governments that are underplaying the crisis.
Europe’s three worst-hit countries — Italy, Spain and France — accounted for more than 32,000 dead, or over half of the global toll. The crisis there was seen as a frightening portent for places like New York, where bodies already are being loaded by forklift into refrigerated trucks outside overwhelmed hospitals. Shortages of such things as masks, gowns and ventilators have led to fierce competition among buyers from Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere.
A regional leader in Paris described the scramble to find masks a “worldwide treasure hunt,” and the French prime minister said he is “fighting hour by hour” to ward off shortages of essential drugs used to keep COVID-19 patients alive.
Cuomo, who has complained in recent days that states are being forced to compete against one another for vital equipment in eBay-like bidding wars, called for a coordinated national approach that would send supplies and people to different areas as their needs peak.
More than 1,200 miles south, the situation grew more dire by the day in Louisiana, where over 10,000 people have tested positive and deaths reached at least 370, up nearly 20% from the day before. Gov. John Bel Edwards warned that the hard-hit New Orleans area is projected to run out of hospital beds in a little more than a week.