EMTs transport a woman with symptoms of COVID-19 to a hospital in Yonkers, New York, on December 17, 2020.
Photographer: John Moore / Getty Images
Photographer: John Moore / Getty Images
We are tracking the latest news about the coronavirus outbreak and the global response. Sign up here to receive our daily newsletter on what you need to know.
The state of New York surpassed 1 million cases of Covid-19, after a dark year in which more than 30,000 of its residents died of the virus.
More than a third of the state’s total cases were reported in December, when the cold pushed people into the home, holidays increased social gatherings and residents grew tired of restrictions. On the first day of 2021, the United States surpassed 20 million cases of Covid-19 – double the country in second place, India.
Governor Andrew Cuomo reported 15,074 new infections, below the New York pandemic record of 16,802 cases reached two days ago. Another 128 people died in the state from Covid-19-related causes, Cuomo said on Saturday. The statewide positive test rate decreased slightly to 7.45%.
The first case in New York was reported on March 1 in New York City, served by three major airports that handle more than 100 million passengers a year. The Big Apple quickly became the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, accumulating more than 80,000 cases in the first month, about 40% of the total in the United States at the time. Governor Andrew Cuomo later blamed President Donald Trump’s administration for allowing 3 million travelers from Europe to enter the United States between December and March, before suspending most arrivals.
To reduce the spread, Cuomo closed schools and businesses, restricted meetings, ordered residents to stay at home, and decreed masks and rules of social distance. In May, the state recovered to the point where Cuomo began to reopen in phases and in regions. New York City, which had more than half the state’s cases, started the process in June. Daily cases and total hospitalizations have dropped to less than 500, while daily deaths have dropped to less than five.
The virus, in turn, has spread across the country, and several states have surpassed New York in daily cases, deaths and hospitalizations amid a lack of a national strategy to control the increase. California had more than 2.2 million cases and 21,000 hospitalized by Covid-19 on January 1.
Texas and Florida also exceeded 1 million, and Illinois is on track to reach that milestone next week. The state of New York now accounts for only 5% of the country’s cases.
On December 31, Cuomo reported a record 16,802 positive test results and 136 deaths. The state had 7,935 hospitalized, twice as many as in the previous month.
Cuomo, a second-term Democrat who wrote a book about his leadership during the pandemic, said on December 31 that it could take a year for the state of more than 19 million people to administer vaccines to a critical mass of its population. On December 22, New York administered approximately 203,000 of the 630,000 doses of vaccine received. Your administration is testing ways to reopen businesses that would rely heavily on testing and tracking.
(Updates with Saturday numbers in the third paragraph.)