An 82-year-old woman has become the first person in New York to die from the coronavirus, the death coming as the state claimed the dubious honor of becoming the most-infected in the nation, taking over from Washington.

The coronavirus victim was said to be a woman with underlying respiratory issues. She died in a New York City hospital, Gov. Cuomo said this morning.

“We had last night a death in a New York City hospital of an 82-year-old woman who had coronavirus. She came into the hospital on March 3,” he said. “She contracted the coronavirus on top of emphysema, then she passed.”

New York now has 524 positive cases, an increase of 100 from yesterday, with 117 patients now in hospitals.

“We did 700 tests,” Cuomo said.

New York City schools remain open, as Mayor Bill De Blasio has resisted closing, saying that the social services the institutions provide cannot be stopped.

Cuomo claimed increased testing capacity has uncovered more cases, resulting in the state becoming the infection leader. He predicted 1,000 new cases as of next week.

Cuomo is “encouraging” people to use telemedicine. “If you do have the coronavirus we don’t want you going into emergency rooms and infecting staff,” he said. New York has 50,000 hospital beds, he added,

New York’s first coronavirus drive-through testing center opened Friday morning in New Rochelle, which has the highest cluster of COVID-19 cases in the United States.