Albany, N.Y. - During his Sunday press briefing on COVID-19, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced 507 more people died in New York State due to coronavirus on Saturday.
The total number of deaths in the state now stands at 15,683.
Cuomo says the 507 deaths number is down from the past week, which saw 540 on Friday, 630 on Thursday, 606 on Wednesday, 752 on Tuesday and 778 on Monday.
The Governor says the number of new hospitalizations for cases of coronavirus continues to be a very high number as well, going up 1,384 on Saturday, but that number is significantly down from more than 1,900 the three prior days.
The total hospitalizations is down again. Down to 16,213. The peak about a week ago was consistently over 18,000.
Cuomo also broke down the percentages of positive cases which continue to be highly dominant in the New York City area.
New York City : 63%
Long Island : 21%
Westchester and Rockland Counties : 8%
The rest of state : 7%
Cuomo says the recent news is good, but says it's no time to get cocky or arrogant, "We are on the other side of the plateau and the numbers are coming down but that's good news only compared to the terrible news that we were living with. This is no time to get cocky and no time to get arrogant. We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do. This is only halftime in this entire situation. We showed that we can control the beast and when you close down, you can actually slow that infection rate, but it's only halftime. We still have to make sure that we keep that beast under control, we keep that infection rate down, we keep that hospitalization rate down as we now get all very eager to get on with life and move on. So it's not over."
Cuomo also thanked all health care workers once again, including the 95,000 medical professionals from throughout the state and outside of the state who have come to the metro New York City area to help.
Cuomo says Massachusetts is seeing an increase in cases and they may need 400 ventilators. Cuomo says he has identified 400 ventilators in the state that can be sent to Massachusetts on a 24 hour notice if they are needed.
The Governor once again also reiterated the need to get more testing. He says antibody testing will help determine who has had the coronavirus, "We don't know how many people were affected, we don't know how many had coronavirus who have self-resolved. We are going to start with antibody testing in New York State to determine how many people have been infected. We're going to do that with the most aggressive way in the nation. We're going to sample people in the state, thousands of people in the state, across the state, to find out if they had the virus. That will tell us for the first time what percent of the population actually has had the coronavirus and are now at least short term, immune to the virus. This will be the true first snapshot of what we're really dealing with and we're going to be doing that over the next week and the New York State Department of Health will be running that."
