Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses. Share the link of this article with your facebook friends

 

 With 600 Coronavirus Deaths, New York Leaders Are Hopeful the Crisis Is Peaking and Flattening

April 6, 2020

 

The scene outside Elmhurst Hospital in Queens on Monday, April 6, 2020

 

US coronavirus deaths pass 14,000, but future projections are better than expected

By Holly Yan, Steve Almasy, Madeline Holcombe and Omar Jimenez, CNN 2 hrs ago Biden says he's 'coming for' Kamala Harris Shows that are perfect for a binge-watch

This New Offer Is the Longest Balance Transfer We’ve Seen Ad NextAdvisor Transfer Your Balance To a 21-Month 0% APR With This New Card Ad NextAdvisor Low Intro APR For Almost 2 Years On Balance Transfers Ad NextAdvisor

Slide 1 of 50: Lily Haines (C) is hugged by her dad, Jeph Haines (L) and mom, Suzanne Haines, as she celebrates her sixteenth birthday on her apartment balcony, watching her friends drive by with signs and balloons, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 8, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson Full screen 1/50 SLIDES © Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

The world is battling the COVID-19 pandemic. (Pictured) Lily Haines is hugged by her dad, Jeph Haines, and mom, Suzanne Haines, as she celebrates her sixteenth birthday on her apartment balcony, watching her friends drive by with signs and balloons on April 8 in Los Angeles.

2/50 SLIDES© Al Diaz/Pool/Reuters Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, trade contractors and employees from Robins & Morton build a coronavirus field hospital inside the Miami Beach Convention Center, in Miami Beach, on April 8. 3/50 SLIDES© Nicole Neri/Reuters Paul Fragoso and his daughter Amber Fragoso sit on their windowsill while practicing social distancing in Cave Creek, April 8.. 4/50 SLIDES© Mike Segar /Reuters A tent is seen erected inside the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for what will be a temporary field hospital constructed by the Samaritan's Purse and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, April 8. Slideshow continues on the next slide 5/50 SLIDES© Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo Church member Ivan McDonald mows the lawn at the Glen Echo Christian Church, on April 8, in Des Moines. 6/50 SLIDES© Leah Millis/Reuters A seder meal to celebrate Passover is seen as Elynn Walter connects with her family using video chat so they can practice the Jewish tradition together in Washington, on April 8. 7/50 SLIDES© Noam Galai/Getty Images Sarah Silverman is seen applauding to show her gratitude to medical staff and essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic on April 8, in New York City. 8/50 SLIDES© Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

The Shubert Theater closed during the coronavirus pandemic on April 8 in New York City. The Broadway League announced today that theaters will remain closed until June 7, effectively ending the 2019-2020 season.

9/50 SLIDES© Kelsey Kremer/The Des Moines Register/AP Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks to the press during a daily coronavirus briefing on April 8 at the State Emergency Operations Center in Johnston, Iowa. Slideshow continues on the next slide 10/50 SLIDES© Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters A lawn sign thanking delivery drivers is seen in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in Atlanta, Georgia on April 8. 11/50 SLIDES© Lucy Nicholson/Reuters The Los Angeles Coliseum sports arena is seen empty as the spread of the coronavirus continues in Los Angeles on April 8. 12/50 SLIDES© Meg Kinnard/AP Photo Personal bottles of hand sanitizer sit on the desk of each South Carolina House member ahead of a special one-day legislative session on April 8 in Columbia. 13/50 SLIDES© Ben Margot/AP Photo A sign at the entrance to the Orinda Care Center stating the center is now closed to visitors is seen on April 8 in Orinda, California. 14/50 SLIDES© Paul Sancya/AP Photo Detroit bus driver JaVita Brown wears gloves and a protective mask during the COVID-19 outbreak in Detroit on April 8. Detroit buses will have free surgical masks available to riders starting Wednesday, a new precaution the city is taking from the new coronavirus. Slideshow continues on the next slide 15/50 SLIDES© Brendan McDermid/Reuters A sign thanking frontline workers is seen on an apartment window, during the outbreak of the coronavirus in New York on April 8. 16/50 SLIDES© Daniel Acker/Reuters

Voters fill out ballots at Riverside University High School during the presidential primary election in Wisconsin on April 7.

17/50 SLIDES© Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images Hospital personnel displays a thank you card after US businessperson Michael 'BigMike' Straumietis donated masks to the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank on April 7. 18/50 SLIDES© Jim Vondruska/Reuters Signs made by prisoners pleading for help are seen on a window of Cook County Jail in Chicago on April 7. 19/50 SLIDES© Lucy Nicholson/Reuters Unused rental cars fill the Dodger Stadium parking lot in Los Angeles on April 7. 20/50 SLIDES© Mike Segar/Reuters A woman exits Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan past messages of thanks written on the sidewalk in New York City on April 7. 21/50 SLIDES© Evan Vucci/AP Photo

At the White House on April 7, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (left) listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a conference call with banks on efforts to help small businesses during the coronavirus pandemic.  

22/50 SLIDES© Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

Outside City Hall in Boston on April 7, Mayor Marty Walsh speaks at a press briefing on the city's efforts battling the coronavirus pandemic.

23/50 SLIDES© Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo A grocery store employee sprays hand sanitizer in a customer's hands as he enters the store on April 7 in Miami Beach, Florida. 24/50 SLIDES© David McNew/Getty Images A sign in Los Angeles on April 7 encourages people to take safety precautions by not touching their faces as coronavirus infections accelerate. 25/50 SLIDES© Mark Wilson/Getty Images A scarecrow dressed in a white coat next to a sign that reads "Thank You Healthcare Workers!" on April 7 in Owings, Maryland.  26/50 SLIDES© Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez celebrates the Chrism Mass for the faithful of the nation's largest Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles on April 6. Without the ability to have public Mass and visitors due to the new coronavirus pandemic, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels live-streams its services. 27/50 SLIDES© Giles Clarke/Getty Images

New York City nurses and health workers gather at a 'COVID-19 Frontline Health Worker Action' event on April 6 to demand safer working conditions, more personal protective equipment (PPE) and free virus testing.

28/50 SLIDES© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (C) speaks during a briefing following a meeting of his coronavirus task force in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 6. 29/50 SLIDES© Karen Ducey/Getty Images Jack Graham Jr. (L) exalts in a win while playing 10,000, a dice game, with his friend William Wentworth at The Exhibition Hall at the Seattle Center on April 6 in Seattle, Washington. The space currently has 150 beds, separated six feet apart, and operated by the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC).  30/50 SLIDES© Joe Raedle/Getty Images City of Sunrise employees place groceries provided by the food bank Feeding South Florida into the vehicles of the needy on April 6. Feeding South Florida has seen a 600 percent increase in the those asking for food aid during the coronavirus pandemic.  31/50 SLIDES© Noam Galai/Getty Images NYU Langone Health workers applaud medical staff and essential workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic on April 6 in New York City. 32/50 SLIDES© Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo Dr. Diana Sedler, a periodontist, puts on a mask made by a 3D printer and designed at her family's business, Burbank Dental Lab, on April 6 in Burbank, Calif. The lab, which typically makes dental products such as dentures, night guards and appliances, has shifted some of its efforts to making masks for health care workers dealing with shortages of protective equipment. 33/50 SLIDES© Jeff Roberson/AP Photo

People walk down a St. Louis street wearing face coverings on April 6. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings after recent studies have shown a significant portion of the population can transmit the coronavirus without showing any symptoms.

34/50 SLIDES© Lynne Sladky/AP Photo Passengers from the Coral Princess cruise ship board a charter flight at Miami International Airport during the coronavirus outbreak on April 6, in Miami. 35/50 SLIDES© David J. Phillip/AP Photo A Texas Department of Public Safety State Trooper talks with a driver at a checkpoint in Orange, Texas, near the Louisiana state border on April 6. The troopers are checking motorists crossing the border between Louisiana and Texas on I-10 to determine if they need to self-quarantine for 14 days to comply with an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. 36/50 SLIDES© Morry Gash/AP Photo Jim Carpenter protests Tuesday's scheduled election amid the coronavirus pandemic on April 6, in downtown Milwaukee. 37/50 SLIDES© Andrew Harnik/AP Photo A medical worker carries out patient samples to be tested for the coronavirus in a cooler marked with "NIH" on the side at a walk in testing site at George Washington University on April 6, in Washington. 38/50 SLIDES© Eric Gay/AP Photo A sign stretches across a footbridge being used as a control point to screen workers for coronavirus symptoms before entering the Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas in Austin, on April 6. 39/50 SLIDES© Andrew Harnik/AP Photo A sign at The Anthem music venue reads "We'll Get Thru This" at the wharf, which is almost completely empty because of the coronavirus outbreak on April 6, in Washington.. 40/50 SLIDES© Bryan r. Smith/AFP/Getty Images

A visibly distraught woman leans against a wall outside of Wyckoff Hospital in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn Apr. 5, in New York.

41/50 SLIDES© Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo Eliza Cazarez, 9, restocks her neighborhood food pantry she and her family provides for neighbors in need due to the coronavirus pandemic, April 5, in Laveen, Ariz. Her father, Orlando Cazarez, of Carver Mountain Woodcraft, helped her and her brothers build the pantry out of reclaimed wood, license plates and other materials. 42/50 SLIDES© Kate Munsch/Reuters Australian citizens, who were aboard the MS Zaandam and Coral Princess cruises, now cleared to fly after quarantining, wait in line to receive their boarding passes for a specially chartered United Airlines flight to take them home to Australia at San Francisco International Airport as efforts continue to help slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in San Francisco, California, April 5. 43/50 SLIDES© Kathleen Flynn/Reuters A view of a room inside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center as they prepare for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 5. 44/50 SLIDES© Joshua Roberts/Reuters U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about the administration's response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak during the daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington, April 5. 45/50 SLIDES© Mike Segar/Reuters Sisters Sylvia (R), Stephanie Falcomer and grandson Peter Henry hold a 'socially distant' 94th birthday party in their driveway for their mother and grandmother Marcella Falcomer, who came to America from Italy in 1955, as they say hello to their relatives on a Zoom video conference call during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in West Nyack, New York, April 5. 46/50 SLIDES© Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images New Yorkers with face masks, as a precaution against the new type of coronavirus (COVID-19), in front of graffiti walls in New York City, on April 5. 47/50 SLIDES© Brian Snyder/Reuters Priest Melake Genet Komos Aba Teklehaimanot from the Worcester Debre Genet Kidist Kidane Meheret Tewahedo Orthodox Church rides in the back of a pickup truck offering blessings amid the pandemic, in Worcester, Massachusetts, on April 5. 48/50 SLIDES© Shannon Stapleton/Reuters People embrace as a band plays at Cafe 247 in Lucerne Valley, California, on April 5. 49/50 SLIDES© Scott Serio/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock An aerial picture shot with a drone shows owner Reggie Haskins and Lead Tech Emmanuel Walker of Bio Aftermath Solutions clean all of the patrol vehicles for the Southwestern District of the Baltimore Police Department, in Maryland, on April 5. After at least one officer tested positive for coronavirus, Police Commissioner Michael Harrison ordered the entire district closed for cleaning and ordered the quarantine of the entire district's personnel. Each remaining district sent one sergeant and eight officers to staff the district's policing responsibilities. 50/50 SLIDES© mpi34/MediaPunch/IPX/AP Photo View of the Wharf after Washington DC Mayor orders it closed to contain the pandemic after evidence of overcrowding on previous day, in Washington, D.C. on April 5. 50/50 SLIDES Slideshow by photo services

Even though Wednesday was another day that brought a record number of deaths reported from coronavirus in the United States, there was a glimmer of hope as models now have less dire forecasts for the total number of fatalities the country will see by the time the pandemic subsides.

More than 431,000 people in the US have been infected, and more than 14,700 have died.

A record 1,858 deaths were reported in just one day Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins. On Wednesday there were 1,922 more.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters Wednesday that there were 779 coronavirus-related deaths across the state Tuesday. It was the highest number of deaths reported in one day by New York officials.

News to stay informed. Advice to stay safe. Click here for complete coronavirus coverage from Microsoft News

Researchers say the peak has yet to come. The US will reach its highest daily number of deaths on or around Sunday, according to modeling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The projections also suggest the US will reach its peak use of resources -- such as hospital beds and ventilators -- on or around Saturday.

But there's a bit of good news: The modeling shows fewer people will die from coronavirus than previously predicted.

On Tuesday, the IHME estimated about 82,000 people will die from coronavirus disease by August. On Wednesday, that estimate was lowered to 60,415.

White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at a White House news conference that models are based on what Americans are doing.

"What has been so remarkable, I think, to those of us that have been in the science field for so long," Birx said, "is how important behavioral change is, and how amazing Americans are at adapting to and following through on these behavioral changes."

"That's what's changing the rate of new cases, and that's what will change the rate of mortality going forward," she said.

Cuomo said it was a bit of good news/bad news.

"Our actions have been better than the statisticians believed. So, we can flatten the curve. We are flattening the curve," he told CNN. "We have to maintain it, but the human cost here, the human toll, the suffering, is just incredible. It's just incredible."

The five-day moving average of new cases in the US, which had trended down for one day, according to Johns Hopkins, went back up Wednesday.

Deaths could be higher than reported, CDC says

Many families are grieving for loved ones who often die alone in hospitals.

And the actual number of deaths could be higher than we know.

Some deaths due to Covid-19 "may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The virus has claimed victims from virtually all demographics, including the young and healthy. But data shows black people are dying from Covid-19 at a disproportionately high rate.

While there have been signs that the number of cases in New York and some other hotspots are leveling off, officials are concerned about other cities.

On a conference call with House Democrats, Birx said the Philadelphia and District of Columbia areas are expected to be the new hot spots, according to a source on the call. She said that they also are carefully watching the Houston area, one of the most populous regions in the country.

Large outbreak at jail in Chicago

More than 400 people linked to one detention facility in Chicago have tested positive for Covid-19, officials said, making the Cook County Jail the largest known source of coronavirus infections in the United States outside of health care facilities.

The Cook County Sheriff's office said 251 detainees and 150 staff members have tested positive. Of the detainees sickened in the outbreak, 22 are hospitalized for treatment and 31 others were moved to a recovery facility.

One detainee died of apparent complications of Covid-19, sheriff's officials said, but results of an autopsy are not back yet. The jail has created a quarantine area to keep detainees who are infected from the others at the jail.

The jail complex houses about 4,700 detainees, according to the sheriff's office. Jail officials have previously said they planned to release nonviolent pretrial defendants who do not have the virus.

Millions of Americans are suddenly unemployed

More than 9.9 million US workers have filed for their first week of unemployment benefits as coronavirus cripples the economy.

In New York, the state with the most cases and deaths, officials estimate a loss of $10 billion to $15 billion in revenue. Cuomo announced those who have filed unemployment claims will receive an additional $600 a week to try to make ends meet.

Tennessee has seen a "record spike" in unemployment claims of more than 250,000 in the last three weeks, Gov. Bill Lee said. Louisiana had 277,000 applications between March 1 and April 4, according to Gov. John Bel Edwards.

In Oklahoma, about 135,000 residents filed for unemployment, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission said.

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice said an additional $600 would be distributed to those who lost their jobs.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed an executive order that allows furloughed employees to receive Covid-19 support payments from their employers to still qualify for unemployment benefits, his office said.

The next weekly report on unemployment claims nationwide will be revealed Thursday.

Blood plasma treatment and vaccine trials move forward

Vaccines typically take years before they're publicly available, but officials are racing to develop one for Covid-19 as quickly as possible.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it might be possible to have a coronavirus vaccine in 12 to 18 months, but some experts say that timeline is risky.

One vaccine trial administered its first dose last month, and now another vaccine trial has started.

Biotechnology company Inovio started a Phase 1 clinical trial this week and estimates that will be finished late this summer, a spokesperson for Inovio told CNN.

"We anticipate rapid enrollment of this initial study," said Dr. Pablo Tebas, an infectious disease specialist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the study's principal investigator.

"There has been tremendous interest in this vaccine among people who want to do what they can do to help protect the greater public from this pandemic as soon as possible."

A source who was on the call with House Democrats told CNN that officials committed to making all vaccines and tests for the disease available to everyone, including those who cannot afford it.

In the meantime, the US Food and Drug Administration expedited the use of blood plasma treatment for seriously ill patients last month.

This week, Jason Garcia -- a man who recovered from coronavirus -- was told his plasma donation has been distributed so the antibodies he developed can help another patient do the same.

Garcia said doctors told him a patient had since improved.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-coronavirus-deaths-pass-14000-but-future-projections-are-better-than-expected/ar-BB12j0Dr?ocid=spartanntp  

***

With 600 Coronavirus Deaths, New York Leaders Are Hopeful the Crisis Is Peaking and Flattening

April 6, 2020

New York leaders are hopeful coronavirus crisis is peaking, flattening

Ben Guarino, Tim Craig, Devlin Barrett

Washington Post, April 6, 2020

NEW YORK —

The coronavirus body count in New York state held steady Monday for the second consecutive day at about 600 deaths — a once-unthinkable statistic that now gives officials some cautious reason to hope that the pandemic may be cresting there.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said that regardless of whether his state was seeing the worst of the covid-19 crisis, it was vital for people to stay home to keep downward pressure on the disease’s spread and announced he was doubling the fine for anyone found breaking the rules.

“While none of this is good news, the possible flattening of the curve is better than the increases we have seen,” Cuomo said during a news conference. Two days of data is not nearly enough to identify a trend, but officials said there were other glimmers of hope, including significant declines in the past two days in the number of new people hospitalized, admitted to intensive care units and intubated. 

New York remains the most severe area for the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, with more than 130,000 residents testing positive for the virus, far more than any other state. Officials cautioned that it is impossible to know whether New York has indeed reached the apex or whether the recent numbers are only a lull before worse ones.

“If we are plateauing, we are plateauing at a very high level, and there’s tremendous stress on the health-care system,” Cuomo said. “This is a hospital system where we have our foot to the floor and the engine is at redline, and you can’t go any faster.” 

With approximately 16,000 coronavirus patients in New York hospitals, health-care professionals said Monday their resources are strained but still sufficient to meet demand.

In the NYU Langone hospital system, which includes six inpatient facilities in the metropolitan area, the number of new patients has “appeared to level off over the past few days,” spokeswoman Lisa Greiner said. The facilities have enough ventilators for the current caseload — “every single patient that required a vent received one,” she said.

Northwell Health has 19 hospitals in the region and has treated 3,300 confirmed coronavirus patients. About 1 in 4 of those patients ended up in intensive care, and 20 percent have needed a ventilator to breathe. Northwell is using about 80 percent of its ventilator capacity. “We feel we have what we need, but being at 80 percent, that could slide quickly,” spokesman Terry Lynam said. 

Later Monday, in a move expected to help ease the strain on the city’s health-care facilities, Cuomo said that President Trump had agreed to use the 1,000-bed hospital ship USNS Comfort, which is docked on New York’s West Side, to treat patients with covid-19, the disease the novel coronavirus causes. That’s on top of 4,000 temporary beds being constructed at the nearby Javits Center convention hall — giving New York significant extra capacity to handle the sick.

Initially, it was envisioned that both facilities would treat only non-coronavirus patients, but those plans quickly evolved amid complaints from hospital leaders frustrated that both the Comfort and the Javits Center were nearly empty while the city’s doctors and nurses were being pushed to the breaking point.

The governor warned that, even if this week marks the peak of the crisis, the rules barring nonessential commerce and prohibiting gatherings will have to stay in effect until at least the end of April.

“We have been behind on this virus from day one, and this virus has kicked our rear end,” Cuomo said. “We underestimate this virus at our peril, and we learned that lesson — this is not the time to slack off what we’re doing.”

The world is battling the COVID-19 outbreak that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic.

As of Monday, the coronavirus had killed 4,758 people in New York state, most of them in the city. More ICUs are being built at emergency hospital sites in and around the city. And while the governor sounded a hopeful note that the extra resources will be enough to give care to all who need it, others emphasized that it’s still too soon to know whether New York has turned the corner.

“It’s too soon to celebrate,” said Stephen S. Morse, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “We’ll know later this week if the trend continues, and we should start to see a sustained decrease in the numbers.”

On Long Island, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said officials there had seen one of the smallest increases in critically ill patients “in a long time now.”

On Monday, 26 new patients were admitted to county hospitals, compared with a week and a half ago when they were seeing about 100 a day, Bellone said.

“If in fact we are reaching that plateau, it means that social distancing is working,” he said. “But that does not mean we take our foot off the pedal now.” He said the worst thing that could happen now would be if “we see some positive news and say, ‘Okay, now we can start adjusting our life and getting back to normal.’ ”

The second-hardest-hit state is neighboring New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said he’s also seeing early signs that the crisis may soon stabilize.

“While we are not anywhere close to being out of the woods yet, we are clearly on the right path to get there,” he said. The social distancing effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus “is starting to pay off, even with the lag time in getting test results back.”

New Jersey has 41,090 confirmed cases, but the daily increase, which was about 24 percent a week ago, was down to 12 percent on Monday. The state’s death toll stands at 1,003, including Jersey City Councilman Michael Yun, who died over the weekend after contracting the virus, the governor announced.

While officials hoped this week might be the worst New York has to face, they were preparing for even greater losses and the possibility of having to create temporary graves if the current pace overwhelms funeral homes and mortuary services in the city.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) was reluctant Monday to go into much detail about the city’s plan, saying only that officials were prepared to deal with the prospect of burying covid-19 victims where they could be tracked and later exhumed for burial elsewhere once the crisis has passed.

“We may well be dealing with temporary burials,” de Blasio said at a news conference. Historically, the city has used Hart Island as a potter’s field site for burials of those whose families or estates were unable to pay for their interment, but the mayor was tight-lipped about whether that location would be used for those who died of covid-19.

“There will be delays because of the sheer intensity of this crisis,” the mayor said. “We’re going to try to treat every family with dignity. . . . The focus right now is to try to get through this crisis.”

Mark D. Levine, chairman of the New York City Council’s health committee, tweeted Monday that victims might be buried in city parks, but other officials sounded a note of caution.

“We’re not interring anyone in city parks at this time,” said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner’s office in New York. The city’s surge plan for influenza pandemics includes a section on temporary burial in parks as a “potential option. But it is not being put into play right now,” she said.

Although the hospital morgues are dealing with high body counts, morgues in the city’s five boroughs, plus the morgues in tents outside Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital and others, have not reached their limits, officials said.

The city also has dispatched about 80 refrigerated trucks to hospitals, each capable of holding 45 to 100 bodies.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-york-leaders-are-hopeful-coronavirus-crisis-is-peaking-flattening/ar-BB12eUxt?ocid=spartanntp  

***

Share the link of this article with your facebook friends