New York City - already the ground zero and the world's worst-battered metro by the coronavirus pandemic - notched a new record in its death numbers on Tuesday: over 10,000.
This, after officials revealed they were now including on the death list people who had never tested positive for the disease but were presumed to have died of it.
Based on update by the New York City Department of Health, the latest figures appeared to increase the overall death toll in the United States by 17 percent to over 26,000.
Despite the grim data, New York City Gov. Andrew Cuomo alluded to signs of hope as the total number of hospitalizations finally indicated a major decrease.
The volume, Cuomo stated, is still high and that the increase in fatalities was mainly from patients in nursing care homes, not medical facilities.
"It is something that the state is looking at," the governor said, but considering the fragility of the city's population, doctors and nurses could only do so much in trying to bring the death rate down, he pointed out.
City Mayor Bill de Blasio made it clear last week that the real death figures was far bigger compared to the official tally, and said authorities would start including presumed virus cases in their report.
In a statement, Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said behind every death is a "friend, family member, or a loved one." Barbot added that the government is focused on making sure every New Yorker who died from the virus "gets counted."
The state of New York has suffered the pain of America's rapidly growing nightmare, responsible for almost half of the deaths from the country's dark moments.
Asked by a freelance journalist from the Philippines via Skype how he can describe the situation "on the ground" in the city, this waiter could only utter one word: "SLAUGHTERHOUSE" (sic).
Meanwhile, hospitalizations and illnesses are dropping and Cuomo has announced that the "worst is over." According to a running count by Johns Hopkins University, over 25,400 people have died in the US.
Reports have also disclosed that, in the five boroughs of the city alone, there were at least 10,366 confirmed or probable deaths, which is almost 2,500 more compared to the state's figures. This would bring New York's death numbers past the 13,000 mark, and that of the tri-state nearing the 17,000 mark.
The gloomy figures brought into clearer perspective the distressing toll the pandemic has already brought on the "Big Apple" - America's largest city - where abandoned streets are haunted by the non-stop wail of ambulances and emergency vehicle sirens.
New York City's death toll has skyrocketed so fast that morgues have been overwhelmed, funeral parlors filled to capacity and burials of unclaimed remains on Hart Island still climbing as of last week. As of late Monday, the city recorded 107,263 cases of the disease with many more undetected because of lack of testing.
There have been more killed by the coronavirus in New York City than in Italy - the worst-affected country in Europe.
