Metro

NYC only using fraction of ventilators of what was expected: de Blasio

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The Big Apple is finally making progress in its battle to contain COVID-19, as the number of patients on ventilators is just a fraction of what was initially projected, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday.

“By this point this week we thought we’d be seeing 300 or more people each day, more people each day, who needed a ventilator. Now it’s about 100 people more each day and that might even be going down,” de Blasio said on Fox 5’s “Good Day.”

Hospitalizations are also down, the mayor added.

The good news comes just a day after the city reached a grim milestone with the death toll surpassing 3,500 — more than the number of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

There may be hundreds of coronavirus victims not included in the city’s official death tally, because they died at home without being tested, the mayor said.





“We should not underestimate for a second this horrible phenomenon of people dying at home,” the mayor said on Fox 5.

“That needs to be in the statistics here because that’s clearly being driven by the coronavirus.

“We do have the numbers and what I’ve said to our health care experts is we should just acknowledge this is overwhelmingly being driven by the coronavirus, not every death, but clearly the vast majority are related to the coronavirus,” he said.

The Big Apple is “not out of the woods at all,” de Blasio said — as he credited New Yorkers with slowing down the bug.

“People did the social distancing. They did the shelter-in-place and I believe that is having a real impact,” de Blasio said.





Still, the city must stay on lockdown to prevent a resurgence of the disease, he said.

“We’re nowhere near” reopening the city, de Blasio said earlier Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.”





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