Covid-19: Virus deaths rise in New York amid hopeful hospital news

NEW YORK: New York state reported 777 deaths from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, Governor Andrew Cuomo said at his daily press conference. The state reported 799 deaths the previous day. The total number of deaths since the outbreak began is 7,844. At least 17,925 people have died of coronavirus in the US — nearly half of them in New York state. According to data from Johns Hopkins University , of the more than 4,75,749 total confirmed cases nationwide, about 1,62,000 are in New York state. That means it has more reported cases than any country in the world.Cuomo said on Friday that the number of patients in ICUs across the state dropped in the last day, offering a glimmer of hope that the surge in critical care hospitalisations might be levelling off. He said there were 17 fewer patients in the state’s ICUs on Thursday than a day prior, a decrease in that figure “for the first time”. “That’s the first time we’ve seen a negative number, so that’s good,” he said.Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci , the leading infectious disease expert in the US, said a test to determine whether a person had been infected with the virus and had therefore acquired some level of immunity would be made available in coming days. “Within a period of a week or so, we are going to have a relatively large number of tests available.” Many countries, including Britain and Italy, have been considering deploying similar tests to provide their citizens with a proof of immunity. That would allow some workers to return to their jobs and would help businesses to slowly restart, mitigating the economic pain of the outbreak.