(Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo)
New York State reported a mind-numbing 103,476 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 3,218 deaths, as of 00:55 GMT, Friday (8:55 a.m. Saturday in Hong Kong), the largest casualty count among all U.S. states.
It added more than 10,400 cases and 680 deaths on Friday alone. This single-day death toll Friday is the largest in the state. New York's case count is more than three times that of neighboring New Jersey, the country's second most infected state, which had 29,895 cases.
If New York were a country, this toll would rank it as the fourth most infected country in the world after the U.S., Italy, and Spain, according to data from real-time data website, Worldometer.
The state's death toll as of Friday was more than the number that died at the World Trade Center terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The weekly comparison is more horrific: New York's death toll has soared 400% and its cases by almost 130% in the last seven days.
New York City, the hardest COVID-19 hit city in the U.S., had 1,584 dead and more than 57,000 cases as of Friday.
New York State is in dire peril from COVID-19 and now looks set to exceed the horrors being experienced by Italy. To take a bite out of the looming tragedy, governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday signed an executive order authorizing the state National Guard to take ventilators from institutions that don't need them immediately and redistribute them to hospitals that do.
Cuomo's order also applies to personal protective equipment (PPE) and was issued a day after he said the state only has enough PPEs in its stockpile to last six days at the current burn rate. The need for more ventilators is critical since a quarter of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state are in ICUs. These people need ventilators and can stay on them for 20 to 30 days, which is far longer than the typical two-to-three-day use for non-COVID-19 patients.
"The practical solution at this point is focus on the emergency that is in front of you," said Cuomo Friday. "I'm not going to be in a position where people are dying and we have ventilators in our state somewhere else."
The state also needs the ventilators as it braces for the disease's dreaded apex, which will likely hit within the next two to three weeks. Medical experts say the apex will be catastrophic for the state.
Cuomo said all of the state's current plans and efforts in place are designed to mitigate the horrific impact of the apex, where thousands of people will die every day. State consultants say New York will need from 75,000 to 110,000 COVID-only beds when the apex hits.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday said he expects an initial surge of COVID-19 patients in his next week. He expects to see a tsunami of 5,000 or more people that will need to be on ventilators.
"We have enough ventilators just to get to Sunday/Monday," he said. "I'm guaranteeing you that next week is going to be a lot tougher. Next week in New York City is going to be very tough. We have days to set up a structure to truly mobilize the medical community of this nation ... If that is not done in the coming days, you're going to see people die who did not need to die."
