Coronavirus: Governor Andrew Cuomo steps up for New York

Andrew Cuomo has become a lifeblood for millions of New York residents as they grapple with the pandemic.

The national guard has built a makeshift morgue outside New York’s Bellevue Hospital. Picture: AFP

As the coronavirus threatens their city like no other, New Yorkers, cooped up in tiny apartments and largely locked away from the world, now tune in for a daily must-watch event.

The morning press conference of straight-talking New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has become a lifeblood for millions of residents as they grapple with the latest fearful figures of the pandemic washing over their city and state.

Each day, all four of the city’s networks as well as cable channels across the US broadcast live as the 62-year-old governor uses charts, graphs, projections and plain talk to tell them the latest about the worst COVID-19 hotspot in the US.

Unlike the daily White House briefings with President Donald Trump, Cuomo does not try to gloss over some facts to overstate or understate the gravity of the crisis­. He tells it straight, regardless of how grim the news is, leading some New Yorkers to see comparisons to former mayor Rudy Giuliani’s leadership after 9/11.

“We have 10 times the problem that the next state has,” Cuomo explained on Thursday (AEDT) as he pointed to a graph showing that more than 30,000 people had been infected in New York — half the total of the entire nation — with 285 deaths. Almost 5000 of those cases emerged in the past 24 hours.

Cuomo points out the maths to explain how, unless the federal government steps up its help, New York’s hospitals will be swamped within weeks. The latest estimates say that in just more than two weeks New York will have 140,000 COVID-19 cases needing hospit­alisation, but the state has only 53,000 hospital beds. Of those who are sick, 40,000 will need intensiv­e care beds, but there are currently only 3000 ICU beds.

“The inescapable conclusion is that the rate of infection is going up,’’ he says. “It is spiking. The apex is higher than we thought and the apex is sooner than we thought. That is a bad combination of facts.”

Cuomo holds his press conferences at a convention centre in the city where the army is building four hospitals of 250 beds each for the influx of patients. Three other temporary hospitals will also be built in the Greater New York area and emergency plans are being drafted to turn university dormitories and hotels into makeshift hospitals.

But Cuomo’s greatest concern is the lack of ventilators, a problem he says will lead doctors to have to choose who lives and who dies.

Andrew Cuomo tells it how it is to millions cooped up in New York city and the state. Picture: AP

He says New York needs 30,000 ventilators but it only has 4000 and has purchased another 7000. Those US companies trying to produce a large amount of ventilators in a short time will not have them ready in time to help New York deal with the peak of the ­pandemic in a few weeks.

“Our single greatest challenge are the ventilators,” Cuomo says.

Earlier this week he clashed with Trump when the Federal Emergency Management Agency initially offered him only an extra 400 ventilators. “What am I going to do with 400 ventilators when I need 30,000?” the Governor said. “You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die because you sent only 400 ventilators.”

Vice-President Mike Pence said later that day the government would send 4000 ventilators to New York but not before Trump hit back, accusing Cuomo of “complaining”, adding, “he’s supposed to be buying his own ventilators”.

But mostly Cuomo, a Democrat and Governor since 2011, has not goaded Trump, preferring to keep relations with the White House solid, knowing he will need whatever help the President’s team can offer.

Cuomo says New York has been hit hardest by the virus ­because it is a global hub for international travellers and because it is such a densely packed city, where social distancing is hard. New York has 10,810 residents per square kilometre, far more than the next-most crammed US city, San Francisco, which has 6564 residents per square kilometre.

Even so, Cuomo believes New York is the “canary in the coalmine”, that it is simply the first large US city to be hit hard by the pandemic and that others will follow its experience in the weeks ahead.

But amid the grim news, the Governor spotted a glimmer of hope amid his graphs on Thursday. He said estimates from last Monday showed hospitalisations were doubling every two days, but on Tuesday the estimates showed a doubling over 3.4 days and on Wednesday estimates showed a doubling every 4.7 days.

Cuomo said this was the first sign that the state’s strict social-distancing guidelines may be work­ing. “That is almost too good to be true. But the theory is, given the density that we’re dealing with, it spreads very quickly, but if you reduce the density you can reduce the spread very quickly,” he said.

Yet for the foreseeable future New York City will remain a virtual­ ghost town with bars, restauran­ts, gyms and non-essential businesses closed, and people urged to work from home and not to leave home except for exercise and essential business. “That really is by far the hottest spot,” Trump said of New York on Thursday. “They have a couple of very tough weeks ahead of them.”

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia