New York, the hardest hit state in America, reported its highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in a single day on Wednesday, announcing that another 779 people had died. That brought the virus death toll to 6,268 in New York State, which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo noted was more than twice as many people as the state had lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“I went through 9/11,” he said at his daily briefing. “I thought in my lifetime I wouldn’t have to see anything like that again — nothing that bad, nothing that tragic.”
The number of hospitalizations had fallen in recent days, he said, suggesting that social distancing measures were working to flatten the steep curve of the virus’s spread, at least for now. The rates depend not only on the number of new arrivals but also on hospital admission standards.
“If we stop what we are doing, you will see that curve change,” Mr. Cuomo warned.
Then he pivoted to a more somber tone. “The bad news isn’t just bad,” he said. “The bad news is actually terrible.”
New Jersey also had a record number of deaths in the past day: Gov. Philip D. Murphy said that 275 people had died there, up from 232 on Tuesday. More people have died in New York and New Jersey — a total of 7,772 — than in the rest of the United States combined.
Mr. Cuomo said that the staggering death toll could continue to rise even as hospitalization rates were falling, because it reflected people who had been on ventilators for long periods of time.
He expressed reluctance to offer a timeline on when social gatherings could begin again, when he was asked about New York’s theater industry, which will remain shuttered until at least June. “I wouldn’t use what Broadway thinks as a barometer of anything,” he said.
New York State now has more confirmed cases than any single country in the world outside of the United States.
The virus might not fade in warm weather, scientists warn.