The worst effects of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City might last into May, Mayor Bill DeBlasio told NBC's "Today" show Tuesday.
"The worst is certainly in the next few weeks, minimum," the New York City mayor said. "I could see it going into May, in fact, with the numbers we're looking at because we have community spread, and that's really the issue."
DeBlasio said the virus is "deeply seeded in our communities, and we're going to see this all over the country, unfortunately," especially if places in the United States that have relative minor cases now do not get ahead of the curve and do massive testing to contain the problem in their area before it rapidly spreads.
The mayor explained, to arrive at these determinations, "The data is what we're looking at all the time, making our decisions based on, but obviously, it means human lives, over 900 lives already lost in New York City. And what we're seeing is a sharp upturn over the last days, certainly the last few weeks."
De Blasio used an example to illustrate how bad the situation is at the moment.
He said the city normally has 20,000 hospital beds at the ready, and officials predict all of them will have to be used exclusively for intensive care coronavirus patients.
He said he hoped this prediction is only a worse-case scenario, but stressed such a situation is what must be planned for in order to deal with the crisis, saying that hospital capacity will have to be tripled in order to treat all patients.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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