{"id":13462,"date":"2020-03-08T11:52:31","date_gmt":"2020-03-08T06:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=13462"},"modified":"2020-03-08T11:52:31","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T06:52:31","slug":"us-covid-19death-toll-rises-to-19-cuomo-declare-state-of-emergency-cases-mount-to-89","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/13462","title":{"rendered":"US COVID-19:Death toll rises to 19, Cuomo declare state of emergency, cases mount to 89"},"content":{"rendered":"

Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday due to continuous increase the count of COVID 19 CORONA cases in New York, with 89 people confirmed sick now, including 12 in the Big Apple.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the new city cases is a\u00a033-year-old Uber driver\u00a0from the Rockaways who worked on Long Island; he is in quarantine in Queens hospital in \u201cserious\u201d condition, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remaining \u201ccalm\u201d is not a priority but testing is, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not urging calm, Cuomo said, in a shot at those who have repeatedly called for calm in the face of recent COVID-19-hampered stock market fluctuates.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m urging reality, the governor said at a noon press conference in Albany.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m urging a factual response as opposed to an emotional response.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s totals reflect a one-day jump of seven new cases in the city more than double the count, five, of the day before.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Uber driver, who city officials said has an underlying respiratory issue, is being treated at St. John\u2019s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was not licensed by the city Taxi and Limousine Commission and so drove on Long Island, officials said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00adThe mayor said other new city cases include:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 The wife and 11-year-old daughter of an Upper West Side man in his 50s who tested positive. They are currently in mandatory quarantine and are mildly symptomatic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Two Brooklyn women in their 60s and 70s who recently returned from a cruise to Egypt. They are both at home in mandatory quarantine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Man from Brooklyn Around 30 hospitalized in serious condition after returning from a trip to Italy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 A Manhattan man in his late 50s, who tested positive after spending time with a COVID-19 positive person on a recent trip to Chile, the mayor tweeted. The man is symptomatic and under mandatory quarantine, he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

As of early Saturday, 18 New York City residents are under mandatory quarantine and 2,255 are under voluntary quarantine, the mayor added.<\/span><\/p>\n

No public school closings had yet been announced in the city, unlike in Westchester, the worst-hit county in New York with 69 total cases, almost all\u00a0linked to a Midtown lawyer\u00a0Lawrence Garbuz.<\/span><\/p>\n

The majority of the new Westchester cases are linked to Garbuz, 50, officials said. <\/span><\/p>\n

The trusts and estates lawyer unintentionally spread the killer bug to his family and synagogue in New Rochelle after apparently picking up the virus while on a mid-February trip to Miami.<\/span><\/p>\n

Westchester is an obvious problem for us, Cuomo said. They talk about the contagion in clusters, and then the clusters tend to infect more and more people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three Jewish day schools, including the Salanter Akiba Riverdale (SAR) Academy in the Bronx, the Westchester Day School in Mamaroneck and the Westchester Torah Academy in White Plains, have been ordered closed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nursing homes and senior living facilities in the New Rochelle area will be asked to suspend outside visitors, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nursing homes are the most problematic setting for us, given that the virus is most deadly for elderly and medically compromised patients, Cuomo said.<\/span><\/p>\n

New York\u2019s spike in numbers parallels what\u2019s happening nationwide and even in Washington, D.C.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first supposed positive case was reported Saturday in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/span><\/p>\n

And an attendee at last month\u2019s Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland is also infected.<\/span><\/p>\n

The White House said neither President Trump nor Vice President Pence had been in close vicinity to the infected person while attending the conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not concerned at all, the president said Saturday when asked about the coronavirus getting closer to the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll hold tremendous rallies, he added when asked if he\u2019ll continue big campaign events.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a Marine stationed in Virginia\u2019s Fort Belvoir and a Navy sailor at Naval Support Activity in Naples, Italy, became the first reported coronavirus cases among US service members.<\/span><\/p>\n

Florida reported the first two deaths on the East Coast, both senior citizens who recently traveled internationally. Those deaths brought the total toll to 19, including 16 in Washington State and one in California.<\/span><\/p>\n

The total number of confirmed US cases climbed to 401, as testing ramped up in many states after the federal Centers for Disease Control allowed state and local labs to test locally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Previously, municipalities across the state to ship swabbed patient samples to the CDC in Atlanta, then wait days for the results, what Cuomo mocked Saturday as a harmful bottleneck.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, at least 100 tests a day are being processed in labs in Albany and New York City, including at privately contracted labs and hospitals, Manhattan\u2019s New York Presbyterian and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center among them.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the CDC would approve automated testing, a thousand tests a day would be possible, the governor said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to find positives,\u201d Cuomo said. \u201cPeople say, \u2018Oh, no, more people have it.\u2019 We say that\u2019s good news, that we know who the people are so now we can put them in an isolated situation and they won\u2019t contaminate more people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The state of emergency will ease access to some $40 million in federal funding for local health departments struggling to monitor thousands of potentially infected people who are self-isolating in their homes, Cuomo said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The last time a state of emergency was declared in New York was for a blizzard in March of 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

Worldwide, the number of confirmed cases reached at least 105,820 Saturday, with 3,558 deaths.<\/span><\/p>\n

Newly reported cases in China dropped below 100, as cases surged in Europe. <\/span><\/p>\n

Italy surpassed Iran to become the country with the third-most infected cases, at 5,883.<\/span><\/p>\n

Desperate to slow the spread, the Italian government is weighing a plan to lockdown the a fourth of its population living in the hard-hit northern Lombardy region, in what would be the most extreme containment effort outside Wuhan, China, the virus\u2019s epicenter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s death toll, which reached 233, is the highest of any country outside of China, in part because the nation\u2019s population is older than average. France and Germany also reported large increases in cases, but France has reported only 11 deaths, and Germany none.<\/span><\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Europe, the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta reported its first case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pope Francis, who was tested negative for coronavirus last week, will live stream the Sunday prayers he usually conducts from a window overlooking St. Peter\u2019s Square, to discourage a crowd from gathering.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese decisions were deemed necessary to avoid the risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus due to the assemblies during security checks required to access the square, as is requested by Italian authorities,\u201d the Vatican said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency on Saturday due to continuous increase the count of COVID 19 CORONA cases in New York, with 89 people confirmed sick now, including 12 in the Big Apple. One of the new city cases is a\u00a033-year-old Uber driver\u00a0from the Rockaways who worked on Long Island; he is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31,1378],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-news","category-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13464,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462\/revisions\/13464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}