New restrictions aimed at curbing coronavirus have been introduced in New York City after Mayor Bill de Blasio warned it was the city’s “last chance” to stop a second wave.
Bars, restaurants and gyms must close by 22:00 and people can only meet in groups of 10 or less.
On November 11, the US is seeing a surge in coronavirus with a record 65,368 Americans being in hospital.
The Covid Tracking Project also reported a record 144,270 new cases.
An average of over 900 people a day are now dying with the disease.
More than a million new cases in November pushed the total confirmed cases to over 10 million nationally, with 233,080 deaths so far.
The US has been seeing more than 100,000 new cases per day over the last eight days in what experts say may be a worse outbreak than those seen in the spring and summer.
According to experts, hospitals across the country could soon be overwhelmed.
On November 11, Dr. Michael Osterhol, a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 advisory panel, said a four to six week lockdown could bring the pandemic under control.
Dr. Osterholm said that the government could borrow enough money to cover lost income for businesses during a shutdown.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also said: “We’re seeing a national and global Covid surge, and New York is a ship on the Covid tide.”
New measures come into effect on November 13 affecting hospitality after Governor Cuomo said contact tracing identified late-night gatherings as key virus spreaders in the state.
If the rate of spread of infection continued to rise, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the New York City’s public school system would close and children would begin online classes.
The mayor tweeted: “This is our last chance to stop a second wave. We can do it, but we have to act now.”
According to NYC’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the city was badly hit by the virus earlier this year when nearly 18,000 people died with Covid-19 in March, April and May.
Other states have broken new case records this week with Texas becoming the first state to hit one million total cases on November 10. If Texas were a separate country, it would rank 11th in the world for most cases.
Other states, including Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and Florida, have also seen numbers rise. CBS News reports 15 states saw the numbers of patients in hospital due to the virus double in the last month.
Some hospitals, such as in Idaho and Missouri, have had to turn patients away because they ran out of room.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that the coronavirus
outbreak in the city will get worse, with damage accelerated by shortages of
key medical supplies.
He said on March 22: “We’re about
10 days away from seeing widespread shortages.
“If we don’t get more ventilators
people will die.”
New York state has become the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the
US and accounts for almost half of the US cases.
There are now 31,057 confirmed cases in the US, with 390 deaths.
On March New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said 15,168 people had tested
positive for the virus, an increase of more than 4,000 from the previous day.
“All Americans deserve the blunt
truth,” Mayor de Blasio told NBC News.
“It’s only getting worse, and in
fact April and May are going to be a lot worse.”
New York now accounts for roughly 5% of Covid-19 cases worldwide.
On March 20, President Donald Trump approved a major disaster declaration
for the state which gave it access to billions of dollars of federal aid.
However, Bill de Blasio has continued to criticize the Trump administration
for what he views as an inadequate response.
He said: “I cannot be blunt
enough: if the president doesn’t act, people will die who could have lived
otherwise.”
“This is going to be the greatest
crisis, domestically, since the Great Depression,” Bill de Blasio
added, referring to the economic crisis of the 1930s.
Speaking at a news conference at the White House on March 22, President
Trump said he had also approved a major disaster declaration for Washington
state and would approve a similar measure for California.
He said: “This is a challenging
time for all Americans. We’re enduring a great national trial.”
The president also said a number of medical supplies were being sent to
locations nationwide, as well as emergency medical stations for New York,
Washington and California, the worst-hit states.
Doctors across New York have reported depleted medical supplies and a lack
of protective gear for healthcare workers on the frontlines of the outbreak.
Warnings of such shortages have reverberated across the US as other state
governors have pleaded with the federal government to make more supplies
available.
In California, officials instructed hospitals to restrict coronavirus
testing. Meanwhile, a hospital in Washington state – once the center of the US
outbreak – said it could run out of ventilators by April.
On March 22, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said states were “competing
against each other” for virus supplies.
He said: “We need millions of
masks and hundreds of thousands of gowns and gloves.
“We’re getting just a fraction of
that. So, we’re out on the open market competing for these items that we so
badly need.”
An almost $1.4 trillion emergency stimulus bill intended to blunt the
punishing economic impact of the pandemic failed to pass the US Senate on March
22.
The bill got 47 votes, falling short of the 60 needed in the 100-member
chamber.
Democrats raised objections to the bill with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying it had “many, many problems”. Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to bail out big businesses.
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