Soaring death toll has been fueled by adding 3,778 people who weren’t tested for Covid-19 but are presumed to have died from it

New York City has revised its Covid-19 death toll sharply upwards to more than 10,000 people, with the city now firmly established as being at the heart of the global coronavirus crisis.

The soaring death toll has been fueled by the adding of 3,778 people who were not tested for Covid-19 but are presumed to have died from it. Last week, Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, admitted that the official death toll was probably too low as many people who died at home or in nursing homes were not included.

Adding these likely Covid-19 deaths to bring the official death toll to 10,367 will help New York City determine the scope of the crisis, according to Oxiris Barbot, the city’s health commissioner. “Behind every death is a friend, a family member, a loved one,” she said. “We are focused on ensuring that every New Yorker who died because of Covid-19 gets counted.”

New York City’s per-capita death toll from the virus now outstrips Italy, with its total number of deaths only slightly behind that of the UK. The coronavirus has been a punishing blow to the city, where a procession of wailing ambulance sirens is often the only sound on eerily quiet streets.

A rising body count has left morgues filled, funeral homes inundated and crematoriums working around the clock. Dozens of refrigerated trucks for the dead have been parked outside overwhelmed city hospitals.

“We have gone through hell,” De Blasio said. “We have to be honest and acknowledge the full impact on families that this disease has had … we could not confirm it at the time because there was no time to test but we thought that was probably what it was and we should be fair and honest about the bigger picture.”

De Blasio, who wants city schools closed for the rest of the academic year, said New York City needed widespread testing to allow a gradual reopening of schools, businesses and other places where people gather in numbers.

The failure of the federal government to roll out enough tests has meant New York is now producing its own tests, with a goal of assessing 50,000 people a week by the start of May, the mayor said.

“A lot of other places are going to have to do the same thing if the US government does not get its act together,” De Blasio said.

Donald Trump has suggested an early loosening of social distancing restrictions, first aiming a rollback for Easter and now for May, but public health experts and many state governors have warned against this, fearing it would prompt a huge spike in infections.

A rigorous system of testing for new cases and tracing of infected people is seen as a crucial element of reopening the US economy, which is hemorrhaging millions of jobs. The federal government has increased testing rates but there has been no plan put forward to facilitate the widespread testing required.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he will look to set out a plan to gradually reopen the state but said he will be guided by “science and public health, not politics” and would not put a timeframe on when a sense of normalcy will return.

“There is no light switch here, it’s more like a dimmer,” Newsom said. “I know you want the timeline, but we can’t get ahead of ourselves and dream of regretting. Let’s not make the mistake of pulling the plug too early, as much as we want to.”