NY in 'race against time' as Trump stresses face masks are voluntary
04 April, 2020
Two of the principal US coronavirus hot spots - New York and Louisiana - reported their biggest jumps in COVID-19 deaths yet on Friday, as the White House sent mixed messages on whether Americans should cover their face if indeed they venture outdoors.
Surging deaths in NEW YORK and New Orleans showed a wave of lethal coronavirus infections expected to overwhelm hospitals, even in relatively affluent, cities with comprehensive healthcare systems, has begun to crash down on the United States.
Governors, mayors and physicians have voiced alarm for weeks over crippling scarcities of personal protective gear for first-responders and front-line healthcare workers, and ventilators and other medical supplies.
With the federal government's national strategic stockpile of such equipment almost depleted, states have already been forced essentially to compete keenly against the other person on the open market for essential resources.
Cities in the united states have also scrambled to expand hospital capacity and recruit healthcare professionals out of retirement to meet looming shortages of sick beds and personnel.
NEW YORK, the pandemic's US epicenter, has mere days to get ready for the worst of the outbreak, said Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose city has suffered greater than a quarter of the 7,000-plus coronavirus deaths to date nationwide.
New York is within an "extraordinary race against time," de Blasio told a news briefing on Friday, renewing his call for the government to mobilize the united states military.
"We're working with an enemy that is killing a large number of Americans, and a whole lot of folks are dying who don’t have to die," he said. "You can’t say, every state for themselves, every city for themselves. That is not America."
Americans, the vast majority of them under orders to remain home aside from essential outings such as grocery shopping or seeing a health care provider, have heard conflicting guidance in recent days about the need for wearing face masks in public areas.
At the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump seemed to muddy the waters further when he announced that federal health authorities are actually recommending individuals wear cloth face coverings to stem transmission of the virus. But he stressed the advisory was purely voluntary, and that he would not be heeding the recommendation himself.
"With the masks, it will likely be an extremely voluntary thing. You can do it, you don't have to do it. I'm choosing never to do it," he said.
Doctors and nurses, many lacking sufficient supplies of medical-grade face masks and other protective gear, were already confronting an onslaught from COVID-19, the respiratory illness due to the highly contagious coronavirus.
One physician at a fresh York City hospital recounted arriving at work on Friday to discover that three of his COVID-19 patients had died that morning. A few hours later, he previously intubated two others.
"I've never seen anything such as this. I've never even heard of something like this in the developed world," he told Reuters on condition of anonymity, because he had not been authorized to consult with the media.
Another spot, Louisiana, reported a sharp jump in deaths, climbing 20% to 370 on Friday, marking the highest day-to-day increase in fatal cases yet for the Gulf Coast state.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards pleaded for residents to follow his state-at-home order as the quantity of infections statewide surpassed 10,000.
"For anybody who are not taking the crisis seriously, I am requesting to do a better job," he told a news conference.
Louisiana's largest city, New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations in late February are thought to have spread the virus before social distancing orders were imposed, has become a center point of the crisis.
The outbreak there has proven a lot more lethal than elsewhere in america, with a per-capita death count twice that of NEW YORK. Doctors, public health officials and available data recommend the Big Easy's high levels of obesity and related ailments may be portion of the problem.
In New York, the united states state hardest hit by the coronavirus in sheer numbers of infections and lives lost, the cumulative number of fatalities rose above 2,900 - on par with the death toll from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
"Personally, it's hard to go through this all day, and then it's hard to stay up forever watching those numbers come in," Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
NEW YORK alone accounted for more than a quarter of the 7,077 US coronavirus deaths tallied by Johns Hopkins University on Friday. Known US infections, approaching 275,000 cases, made up about 25% of the more than 1 million cases reported worldwide.
'Pain, Loneliness and Death'
Some of the most gravely ill patients were dying alone as medical staff forbade relatives to be with them within their final hours for concern with an additional spread of infection.
Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York's Columbia University INFIRMARY, described the scene inside tents setup outside hospitals to greatly help contain a growing influx of patients.
"In those same tents, I saw too much pain, loneliness, and death. People dying alone," he wrote on Twitter on Thursday night.
In NJ, Governor Phil Murphy ordered all flags lowered to half-staff for so long as the emergency lasts, saying his state was the first to take such a measure.
Fresh data on Friday highlighted the monetary consequences of the general public health crisis, confirming that thousands of Americans had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Economists said actual job losses will prove much larger but had yet to be reflected in employment figures as much of the economy had only begun to turn off last month.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
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