New York COVID-19 death toll passes 10K; new hot spots to emerge

New York’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 on Monday even as the lack of fresh hot spots in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world yielded a ray of optimism and fueled discussions about how some places might begin to reopen.

The brunt of the disease has been felt most heavily in New York, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, but grim projections of a virus that would spread with equal ferocity to other corners of America and the world had not yet materialized after more than a month.

The statewide death toll in populous states like Florida and Pennsylvania was on par with individual counties outside New York City. As Colorado deaths surpassed 300 on Monday, Gov. Jared Polis compared that figure to New York’s thousands and called it “a tragic indication of our success in Colorado.”

Officials around the world worried that halting quarantine and social-distancing measures could easily undo the hard-earned progress that those steps have achieved in slowing the spread.

Still, there were signs countries were looking in that direction. Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs, and a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown restrictions. Governors on both coasts of the U.S. announced that they would join forces to come up with a coordinated reopening at some point, setting the stage for a conflict with President Donald Trump, who asserted that he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to reopen.

New York saw a few positive signs Monday at the same time that it reached another bleak milestone. It marked the first time in a week that the daily toll dipped below 700. Almost 2,000 people were newly hospitalized with the virus Sunday, though once discharges and deaths are accounted for, the number of people hospitalized has flattened to just under 19,000.

“This virus is very good at what it does. It is a killer,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday during a state Capitol news briefing.

In the U.S., about half of the more than 22,000 deaths reported are in the New York metropolitan area. Meanwhile, tracking maps maintained by Johns Hopkins University show a dense patchwork of coronavirus cases along the Northeast corridor, as well as significant outbreaks corresponding to other major metropolitan areas — though nothing on the scale of what New York has endured.

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Dr. Sebastian Johnston, a professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, said it appeared that COVID-19 had peaked in much of Europe, including France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the U.K. He was worried the virus might now start to take off in countries across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. There’s also concern about Russia.

Still, hot spots may yet emerge as states lift stay-at-home orders, said Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington institute that created widely cited projections of virus-related deaths. He pointed to states where the number of COVID-19 cases is still climbing: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida.

“Don’t consider relaxing social distancing in the near term,” Murray said he’d advise leaders in those states. “You need to stay the course.”

A study released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, relying on data from mobile devices in New Orleans, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle, suggested that social-distancing policies prompted more people to stay at home in March and might have curbed spread of the new virus.

Researchers say people increasingly left their devices — and themselves — at home as cities, states and the federal government adopted increasingly restrictive closures and social distancing policies.

The report “provides some very early indications that these measures might help slow the spread of COVD-19,” the authors said.

The infection rate remains relatively low in areas of the developing world that have poor or nonexistent health care infrastructure. The rapid spread of the coronavirus beyond cities to more rural areas often depends on travel and social connections, said Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief.

But he noted that rural areas often have less sophisticated health surveillance systems to pick up potential disease clusters. “Is it that it’s not there or is it that we’re not detecting the disease when it is there?”

In other countries, including those that have been grappling with the virus for longer than the U.S., officials pointed to positive signs as they began prepping for the reopening of largely shuttered economies and industries.

In Italy, where the day-to-day increase was one of the lowest in weeks, bolstering a generally downward trend, slightly eased restrictions were about to take effect in some sectors, such as allowing stores selling necessities for newborns to reopen.

The hard-hit Veneto region is entering a phase the governor, Luca Zaia, termed ’’lockdown light.”

Zaia is expanding the 200-meter from home radius for physical fitness and allowing open-air markets in a new ordinance that takes effect Tuesday. At the same time, the ordinance makes masks or other face coverings mandatory outside the home — not just in supermarkets or on public transportation, as was previously the case.

Veneto has been credited with a rapid response to the virus — including a higher number of tests than the national average — that has helped limit the number of fatalities. It is the fourth-hardest hit, recording 9% of all infections but just 4% of deaths, at 779 to date.

Authorities announced on Monday that there were 3,153 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours – approximately a 1.9 percent increase. That brings Italy’s overall toll of known cases to nearly 160,000. The day-to-day death toll, 566, however, was up, from the 431 new deaths registered on Sunday.

In Spain, one of the hardest hit countries in the pandemic, workers in some factory and construction jobs were permitted to return to the job as the government looked to restart manufacturing. Retail stores and services were still required to stay closed, and the government required office workers to keep working from home.

Some health experts and politicians argue that it’s premature to ease the lockdown in a nation that has suffered almost 17,500 deaths and reported more than 169,000 infections, second only to the United States’ 557,000 infections.

Health Minister Salvador Illa said Monday that the government will move carefully on allowing others to end their self-isolation. He said officials will proceed with “the utmost caution and prudence … and always based on scientific evidence.”

“We’re in no position to be setting dates” about when isolation might end. “We can’t get ahead of ourselves.”

In Madrid, José Pardinas took a mask being handed out by police as he walked to work at a moving company that was re-starting operations after a three-week halt.

“The company hasn’t given us any protective equipment. I’m quite nervous about contracting the virus because my family can’t afford more time without an income,” Pardinas said.