Virus's Toll in Region Nears 2,000 Deaths and 100,000 Cases: Live Updates

Deaths attributable to the virus, which have been climbing by an average of 30% each day for the past week, stood at 1,866 in the region Tuesday night — 1,550 in New York, 267 in New Jersey and 69 in Connecticut — and are set to pass 2,000 Wednesday.

In New York, the hardest-hit state in the country, the numbers of people hospitalized, on ventilators, testing positive, or dead of the virus have all begun to increase a little more slowly in recent days.

But they are still increasing every day, and officials expect it will be somewhere between a week and three weeks before the virus begins to ebb.

Economic and public life in the region remain mostly shut down: schools are closed, most businesses are shuttered, traffic is scarce and ambulance sirens wail regularly. And there are no clear signs yet of when things might return to normal.

“We’re all in search of the apex and the other side of the mountain,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday. “But we are still headed up the mountain.”

Rent is due today, but many tenants cannot pay.

The true economic toll of all but shutting down New York City to stem the spread of the coronavirus may become clearer today, when April rent is due.

In just a month’s time, the lives of millions of New Yorkers have been turned upside down, with many losing jobs and worrying about paying their bills.

“It’s gotten to this point where I really cannot pay rent because doing so would jeopardize my ability to buy food or basically survive,” said Henry True, 24, a musician and freelancer who pays $600 a month for a bedroom in a shared apartment in Brooklyn.

There are about 5.4 million renters in the city. If a large share of them cannot make rent, landlords — especially smaller ones that operate on thin margins — will be unable to pay their own bills, property owners said.

The real estate industry is bracing for up to 40% of tenants to miss their April payments.

“I’m trying not to panic,” said Christopher Athineos, whose family owns nine buildings in Brooklyn. “In my lifetime and even my parents’ and grandparents’ lifetime, we have never seen anything like this.”

In the battle for resources, Trump and governors are still fighting.

A chorus of governors from across the political spectrum, including the leaders of New York and Connecticut, is publicly challenging the Trump administration’s assertion that the country is well stocked and well prepared to test people for the coronavirus and care for the sickest patients.

Cuomo said on Tuesday that the country’s patchwork approach to the pandemic had made it harder to get desperately needed ventilators.

“You now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you,’” said Cuomo, a Democrat. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator.”

Connecticut’s governor, Ned Lamont, also a Democrat, said it was “disturbing” to learn that a national stockpile of medical supplies was running empty.

“We are on our own,” he said.

As the virus has exploded in the United States, governors have become key figures in the public fight against it, and several have gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over the need for testing supplies and ventilators.

For his part, President Donald Trump has been quick to pick fights with governors who have criticized his efforts. He took aim at Cuomo on Tuesday, saying that the governor “shouldn’t be complaining.”

Help is arriving, but much more is needed, Mayor de Blasio said.

More than 500 paramedics and emergency medical technicians, 2,000 nurses and 250 ambulances are heading to New York City from across the United States to shore up a health care system that is being buried under an avalanche of coronavirus patients, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.

The mayor’s remarks came on a day when the city’s death toll from the virus passed 1,000.

The mayor announced the arriving reinforcements at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, which is being converted to an emergency care center for virus patients to relieve pressure on Elmhurst Hospital, where conditions have been called “apocalyptic.”

“Very soon this is going to be 350 hospital beds to protect the lives of New Yorkers,” de Blasio said, noting that 135 additional ambulances and 270 paramedics had already arrived.

As the number of cases and hospitalizations continues to rise rapidly, de Blasio said the city’s needs for equipment and medical workers remained vast, and immediate.

“This coming Sunday, April 5, is a demarcation line,” he said, zeroing in on what he has called a critical date. “This is the point at which we must be prepared for next week when we expect a huge increase in the number of cases.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

Virus's Toll in Region Nears 2,000 Deaths and 100,000 Cases: Live Updates

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