N.Y.C. Death Toll Tops 1,500 as Cuomo Warns on Ventilators: Live Updates – The New York Times

The warning from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday was ominous: At the rate the state was using ventilators for coronavirus patients, it would run out in just six days.

The remarks imposed an urgent timeline on the guidance the governor has been giving for weeks — that if New York did not get a major infusion of the potentially lifesaving machines, and quickly, the number of virus-related deaths in the state would spike drastically.

“If a person comes in and needs a ventilator and you don’t have a ventilator, the person dies,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily briefing in Albany. “That’s the blunt equation here. And right now we have a burn rate that would suggest we have about six days in the stockpile.”

The comments came as doctors in New York City, where hospitals’ supplies are dwindling amid a flood of virus patients, cautioned that medical workers might soon need to make difficult choices about rationing care.

Across the United States, hospitals and public health officials have been working on plans for what might happen if the number of virus patients were to exceed the available space in intensive care units.

The governor said that there were 2,200 ventilators in the state’s stockpile and that about 350 new patients a day need them. At that pace, he said, “2,200 disappears very quickly.”

On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that New York City alone would need 2,500 to 3,000 new ventilators next week to cope with an expected surge in patients.

Mr. Cuomo said that he had spoken to President Trump on Thursday and that while he was sure “the federal government would do anything they can do to help,” he did not think New York could count on the White House to address the shortfall in time.

“I don’t think the federal government is in a position to provide ventilators to the extent the nation may need them,” he said. “Assume you are on your own in life.”

Mr. Cuomo said, however, that the state had been making contingency plans. It is trying to buy ventilators on the open market and converting so-called BiPAP machines — another kind of respiratory device — for use as ventilators. Unused ventilators from hospitals in upstate New York could also be trucked to New York City and the surrounding area as needed, he said.

“We have all these extraordinary measures that I believe if push comes to shove will put us in fairly good shape,” he said.

Other daily statistics from the governor:

• Deaths in New York State: 2,373, up 432 from 1,941 on Wednesday. New York now accounts for 42 percent of the 5,708 virus-related deaths in the United States.

• Confirmed cases: 92,381 in New York State, up from 83,712. New York City has nearly 52,000.

• Hospitalized in New York State: 13,383, up from 12,226.

• In intensive care in New York State: 3,396, up from 3,022.

In more positive news, Mr. Cuomo said that 21,000 medical workers from outside the state had volunteered to work in New York hospitals. Including workers from New York, more than 85,000 health care professionals, many of them retirees, have raised their hands.

New York City officials on Thursday advised residents to shield their faces with a scarf, bandanna or other protective covering when leaving their homes, although they reiterated that people should continue to stay at home as much as possible during the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr. de Blasio urged city residents not to use the surgical or N-95 masks that are desperately needed by emergency services workers, doctors, nurses and other hospital staff employees who are treating infected patients.

“You can create your own version,” Mr. de Blasio said. “You can be creative and put whatever decoration you want on it. It can be as homemade as you want. But that’s what we want you to do: something homemade.”

The mayor and the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, repeatedly said that the city and state’s social distancing guidelines continued to apply.

“These face coverings shouldn’t be seen as an invitation to come closer,” Dr. Barbot said.

Mr. de Blasio said that city officials were offering the new guidance because they were increasingly concerned that apparently healthy people who did not have virus symptoms could be spreading infection regardless.

The Trump administration is expected to announce that all Americans should wear cloth masks or other face coverings if they go out in public, based on a forthcoming recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The announcement would be a shift in federal guidance amid new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who show no symptoms.

Until now, the C.D.C., like the World Health Organization, has advised that ordinary people need not wear masks unless they are sick and coughing, partly to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them.

Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark announced Thursday that his city and three neighboring New Jersey communities were enacting aggressive measures to slow the spread of the virus.

In “Operation Lockdown,” as the effort is called, police will patrol the borders between Newark, Orange, East Orange and Irvington, and other areas, to reduce traffic between the four cities.

Other patrols are focused on breaking up gatherings outside stores, in parks and on corners. Violators will face summonses and legal action, Mr. Baraka said. The crackdown will last seven days and could be extended.

Mr. Baraka said in a statement that people traveling back and forth between the cities, which are all in Essex County, were “making all of our neighborhoods unsafe, so we are going to have the police from our individual communities patrolling the borders to keep them from entering.”

From Monday night into Tuesday morning in Newark, the authorities issued 161 summonses and closed 15 businesses, the State Police said. The next night, the police issued 125 summonses and closed five businesses.

There were 2,617 confirmed cases of the virus and 99 deaths in Essex County as of Thursday. Only Bergen County, the state’s most populous county, had more.

With 182 new deaths since Wednesday, New Jersey’s death toll from the virus more than doubled, to 537, in two days, Gov. Phil Murphy said on Thursday.

“I know these numbers are stark,” he said. “They are certainly sobering.”

With 432 more deaths in New York State and 27 deaths in Connecticut reported on Thursday, the toll for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut stood at 3,022.

New Jersey now has over 25,000 confirmed virus cases, with 3,500 people testing positive since Wednesday, the governor said.

Mr. Murphy spoke after touring a 250-bed field hospital at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus that is to open on Monday. The state is building similar hospitals in Edison and Atlantic City.

Mr. Murphy also said he had signed an executive order authorizing the State Police to commandeer medical supplies.

And he noted that six people in the state had been criminally charged with assaulting law enforcement officers by spitting or coughing on them and claiming to have the virus. Offenders face fines of up to $10,000 and up to 18 months in jail.

New York City recorded its first coronavirus-related death of a public-school teacher this week after a third-grade teacher at Public School 9 in Brooklyn died late Tuesday, officials said.

“This is a tragedy for the P.S. 9 students, staff and the entire school community,” the school’s principal, Fatimah Ali, wrote in a message to parents and students about the death of the teacher, Sandra Santos-Vizcaino.

Ms. Santos-Vizcaino’s current and former students and colleagues shared memories of her on a tribute page.

“No one could make me happy the way you did,” one student wrote. “I can’t imagine passing her room and not seeing her there or not even being able to ask her a question. This is all too surreal,” wrote Deirdre Levy, a fellow teacher at the school.

Ms. Santos-Vizcaino’s death was not the Department of Education’s first virus-related fatality. Dez-Ann Romain, the principal of the Brooklyn Democracy Academy, died last month after becoming infected with the virus.

With 1.1 million students and over 75,000 teachers, the city’s public school system is the largest in the United States. Mayor Bill de Blasio closed the schools on March 15 under mounting pressure from parents and educators.

Tekashi69, who was born Daniel Hernandez, will instead complete his sentence under home confinement, his lawyer, Lance Lazzaro, said.

Mr. Hernandez, 23, who is also known as 6ix9ine, pleaded guilty last year to a series of gang robberies and shootings and cooperated with federal prosecutors by testifying against his former associates in the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods gang. He has asthma, which, his lawyer argued, increased his risk of becoming infected with the virus.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who sentenced Tekashi69, agreed.

Mr. Lazzaro said that the rapper had been treated for shortness of breath in the past week, but that he was feeling better.

An inmate at the Sing Sing Correctional facility north of New York City died this week after contracting the coronavirus, the first-virus-related death in the state prison system, officials confirmed on Thursday.

The inmate, Juan R. Mosquero, 58, tested positive for the virus and did not appear to have any pre-existing health conditions, according to an employee at the Westchester County Medical Examiner’s Office, which conducted an autopsy.

He was not hospitalized when he died, said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Mr. Mosquero was serving a sentence of up to 35 years in prison after being convicted in Queens in 2012 on charges of first-degree criminal sexual act and first-degree sexual conduct against a child, according to the state corrections department.

He is one of 24 inmates in New York’s prison system to have been infected with the virus, officials said. There about 43,000 prisoners in the state’s 52 prisons. As of Thursday, 176 staff members had tested positive for the virus.

Mr. Mosquero’s death will be reviewed by the State Commission on Correction, which oversees the state’s prisons.

Anthony Annucci, the state’ acting corrections commissioner declined an interview request on Thursday.

He said in a statement that because of the outbreak, the department had suspended “visitation early on, eliminated intake and transfers of individuals throughout the system, distributed hand sanitizer in common areas, and have been dogged in our identification of symptomatic staff and incarcerated individuals.”

Prison officials have not identified which facilities have virus cases, but an official with the corrections officers’ union said Bedford, Clinton, Marcy, Sing Sing and Wende and Bedford were among the prisons where the virus had been detected.

A prisoners’ advocacy group on Thursday called for Mr. Cuomo to release prisoners who are at increased risk of becoming infected with the virus because they older or have compromised immune systems.

“We knew people were going to die,” Dave George, associate director of the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign and Parole Preparation Project said in a statement. “We knew people were going to die. The governor must immediately grant clemencies to thousands of incarcerated New Yorkers before more deaths occur in his state prisons.”

Reporting was contributed by Kevin Armstrong, Anne Barnard, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Nancy Coleman, Alan Feuer, Michael Gold, Virginia Heffernan, Corey Kilgannon, Adam Liptak, Andy Newman, Jan Ransom, Melena Ryzik, Andrea Salcedo, Nate Schweber, Eliza Shapiro, Matt Stevens and Michael Wilson.