People across Long Island took advantage of the first weekend of truly springlike weather to escape their home confinement and enjoy the outdoors.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone again warned residents to remember follow social distancing guidelines and wear face coverings.
“Our parks have been busy,” Bellone said during his daily news briefing Sunday afternoon. “Overall reports I’ve seen have been positive — by and large there’s been compliance. People have been responding positively,” he said.
“The county’s focus has been on educating the public to inform them of what they’re going to do to get us to a place where we can reopen our economy as safely as we can, to save lives,” Bellone said.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart said people are “overwhelmingly” in compliance.
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To go out without a face covering is “disrespectful” to other people, the governor said today. People who are infected but asymptomatic can transmit the virus to others. “You wear a mask to protect other people, not for yourself,” he said.
The county has seen a decline in hospitalizations for 13 days in a row. Fourteen consecutive days of a decline in hospitalizations is one of the metrics counties need to hit before the governor will consider beginning to reopen the local economy.
There were 813 COVID patients hospitalized in Suffolk as of this afternoon, Bellone said.
Peconic Bay Medical Center currently has 16 COVID-positive patients in the hospital, deputy executive director Amy Loeb said. Three of them are in the intensive care unit, she said.
“We have resumed urgent surgery for patients,” Loeb said. “All went well and we are relieved to be able to provide this important care for our community.”
Elective surgeries are still on hold, however. The governor has said hospitals in a region must have at least 30% of their capacity available before he will allow elective surgeries to resume.
Cuomo has said the state will proceed with reopening on a region-by-region basis and indicated that regions upstate, which generally was much less impacted by the coronavirus than downstate, will reopen first, with a phased approach.
Bellone said today he is not sure whether Suffolk will be considered separately from Nassau — or whether the two Long Island counties will be considered separately from New York City, where the virus had its most devastating impacts, killing more than 13,000 people as of May 2.
“We’re trying to take a coordinated approach,” Bellone said.
“There are differences between New York City and Suffolk, and even within the county there are differences,” he said. But Bellone would not commit to the idea of reopening the East End for businesses that drive its seasonal, tourism-based economy.
“That will depend on what the data shows and what makes sense,” the county executive said.
The county is currently “in the planning stages” so that it’s ready to reopen when the data justify it.
“We want to be confident we can do this in a safe way, so we have a successful reopening,” Bellone said.
“The key to reopening is going to be preventing a second surge or second wave of cases,” he said.
“That’s why our emphasis has been on educating the public, trying to encourage people to do the right thing,” Bellone said.
The governor today pushed back against those who say the crisis is over in New York.
“It’s not over,” Cuomo said during his news briefing in Manhattan. “We’re not out of the woods,”
The trajectory of the infection rate in New York didn’t change by itself, he said, repeating what has become a familiar refrain in his daily briefings.
”New Yorkers grabbed that with both hands and bent it downward,” he said, by their adherence to the stay-home and social distancing rules. If that behavior changes, “you can see it could pick up,” the governor said, snapping his fingers to emphasize how fast the infections can move in the opposite direction.
Total COVID hospitalizations in New York fell below 10,000 for the first time since March 18-19. New hospitalizations fell below 800, though Cuomo warned it could be an “anomaly” caused by spotty reporting on weekends.
Total deaths in New York increased by 280 deceased to 19,189. An additional 29 long-term care resident deaths were reported yesterday, according to state data, bringing the total number of deaths in long-term care facilities in New York to 3,762 as of May 2.
As of today, 1,256 Suffolk residents have been killed by COVID-19, according to data provided by the county. Suffolk’s death toll rose by 29 people in the past 24 hours, Bellone said. The state has not provided a county by county breakdown of nursing home deaths since May 1, when it reported 432 Suffolk residents in long-term care facilities had succumbed to the disease.
Today, Cuomo and the governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced their agreement to form a consortium for procurement of equipment and supplies needed to fight a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
Together, the seven states buy about $5 billion worth of equipment and supplies, Cuomo said. Forming a consortium will increase their power in the international marketplace and allow them to get better prices for PPE equipment, ventilators, medical equipment and supplies.
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