The number of coronavirus cases in New York surged by more than 4,500 on Saturday, jolting the statewide number of infected past 11,600 on the eve of an unprecedented lockdown from Brooklyn to Buffalo aimed at containing the deadly bug.
New York City, which remained the epicenter of the nation’s COVID-19 crisis, accounted for the bulk of the alarming increase. More than 2,400 new cases were reported in the Big Apple, raising the total number of sick to 8,115, city officials said.
The virus killed at least 15 more people in the city on Saturday, officials said, bringing the death toll to 60. The day before, COVID-19 claimed 14 lives between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., a troubling rate of more than one an hour. The statewide coronavirus death toll meanwhile exceeded 70.
Nationwide, there were more than 25,000 cases with 300 deaths, data Johns Hopkins University revealed Saturday, as New Jersey joined four other states — New York, California, Illinois and Connecticut — in imposing restrictions on movement to stop the spread of the virus.
In response to the mounting crisis — and the expectation that the grim numbers will continue to rise exponentially— Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised to purchase 6,000 new ventilators and two million virus-blocking N95 masks.
A million of the masks will be sent to health care responders in the city, and 500,000 would go to Long Island, he said.