The more than 147,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in New York City are “just the tip of the iceberg," the city's health commissioner said on Thursday, adding that the actual figure could be closer to 1 million.

Speaking at a news briefing, Oxiris Barbot said she thinks the number of cases is vastly undercounted "for a number of different reasons,” according to CNBC.

“New Yorkers have been heeding to our advice that if they have mild symptoms, at this point in time, when you’ve got community-wide transmission, having a test result isn’t going to change what we’re going to tell you to do,” Barbot said.

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She added that city is still acquiring the necessary materials to scale up its testing capacity, including test kits, swabs and reagents, so it must focus on testing for the sickest patients.

“We want to reserve testing for those individuals who are really sick enough to be in the hospital,” she said. “With that being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if at this point in time, we have probably close to a million New Yorkers who have been exposed to COVID-19.”

New York state has become the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., with the majority of cases reported in the city.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Andrew CuomoFearless Girl statue in NYC dressed in lace collar to honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg NYT editorial board remembers Ginsburg: She 'will forever have two legacies' New York to honor Ginsburg with statue in Brooklyn MORE (D) said Tuesday that a “gentle decline” in both deaths and hospitalizations is underway while emphasizing the need for expanded testing.

"We want more testing ... because when you identify a positive then you can isolate that person and that's exactly what we're trying to do,” he told reporters at a briefing.

"When you increase the number of tests, you're going to increase the number of people who test positive,” he added.

The governor also said Tuesday that the restrictions to mitigate the spread of the virus would likely end at different times in the state's various regions.

“We operate as one state, but we also have to understand variations,” he said. “And you do want to get this economy open as soon as possible, and if a situation is radically different in one part of the state than another, take that into consideration.”