Cuomo: If hospitals are overwhelmed, New York regions will shut down
This story was reported by Bart Jones, Bridget Murphy, David Reich-Hale, John Valenti and Scott Vogel. It was written by Jones.
If the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 doesn't stabilize or drop in the next five days, the state will restrict indoor dining on Long Island and end it altogether in New York City, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Monday.
The state also may shut down different regions if hospital capacity "becomes critical" and is in danger of becoming 90% full, Cuomo said.
Despite the gloomy news, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a guest by videoconferencing at Cuomo's briefing, predicted New York could have the virus largely under control by late summer, if the vaccination process proceeds without major disruptions.
Cuomo said he would order restaurants on Long Island and elsewhere to reduce indoor dining to 25% of their capacity and New York City to stop indoor dining completely if the hospitalization figures don't improve. He also said the state is ordering hospitals to increase capacity by 25%, amid surging cases.
Restaurants on Long Island and throughout most of the state have been operating at 50% capacity for indoor dining. New York City is at 25%.
The decision on indoor dining will be made on a regional basis, and restaurants would have a couple of days to implement it, Cuomo said.
"Right now it is increasing," he said of the hospitalization rates. Because people are gathering in groups for the holidays despite warnings against doing so, "We are looking at continued increases from now through mid-January," unless people change their behavior.
A further reduction in indoor-dining capacity would be the latest challenge facing Long Island restaurants, said Damien Carlino, owner of Cafe Al Dente in Oyster Bay, where dine-in traffic has dropped dramatically.
"I’m not even at 50 percent now," said Carlino. He usually does "30 or 40" parties in December, but with large events on pause, the restaurant is mainly getting by with takeout geared toward families.
"It brings in money so we can keep the kitchen staff the way it is, and I don’t have to let anybody go, for now."
Meanwhile, Cuomo called on retired doctors and nurses "to return to service." He said the state believes it can bring in about 20,000 retirees to supplement regular staffs, many of whom are becoming stressed and exhausted after months battling the coronavirus.
Continued rise in virus cases
The level of daily confirmed cases on Long Island is now on par with many of the days in April, when the pandemic peaked. On Friday, Long Island surpassed 2,000 confirmed cases for the first time since April. Just 10 days earlier, it surpassed 1,000 daily cases for the first time since April.
The number of new confirmed cases in test results from Sunday was 534 in Nassau, 748 in Suffolk and 2,765 in New York City, according to the state's COVID-19 dashboard. The positivity level was 4.53% in Nassau, 6.6% in Suffolk and 4.19% in New York City. Long Island's positivity level was 5.4%.
"While the number of new COVID-19 cases is slightly lower today, there is no cause for celebration," Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said Monday. "Today’s infection rate remains above 6 percent once again, and this week we saw four straight days of new cases over 1,000. To put this in perspective, during the height of the pandemic this spring, Suffolk County only saw 12 days over 1,000 new cases."
He added: "I cannot stress enough the dangers posed by small indoor gatherings. Just because you are in your home with people you trust does not mean you are safe. If we don’t change our behaviors quickly, our hospital system will be at risk of being overwhelmed and we will lose more lives."
Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said Monday: "At the moment hospital capacity is not a pressing threat in Nassau County, but the trend is heading in the wrong direction. To save lives and prevent further restrictions on restaurants and other businesses, we must do everything we can to hold the line."
She added that at the peak of the pandemic, Nassau had almost 2,600 patients with COVID-19, compared to 337 in hospitals on Sunday. "We do expect these numbers to go up, and Nassau is ready to increase capacity for hospital and ICU units as needed," she said.
Cuomo urged the public to keep down the number of people at family gatherings. Overwhelmed hospitals, he said, would mean many patients end up in hospital hallways and "die … on a gurney."
Activists lit about 5,000 candles in Bern, Switzerland, on Sunday to commemorate the people who died of the coronavirus in that country. Globally, more than 1.5 million people have died of coronavirus-related causes. Credit: AP/Anthony Anex
Fauci: Vaccine offers hope
Fauci said he was hopeful that after a bleak holiday season lasting into the early part of the new year, New York could slowly bring the virus under control through vaccinations. The goal is at least 75% to 80% of the public receiving vaccinations to get a general umbrella of protection.
After nursing home residents and staff, health care workers and other essential workers are vaccinated in the first few months of 2021, "I would think by the time you get to the beginning of April, you’ll start getting people who have no high priority, just the normal man and woman New Yorker in the street who is well, has no underlying conditions," Fauci said.
"If we get them vaccinated in a full-court press … and you do that through April, May and June … if we do that well, by the time we get into the core of the summer and get to the end of the summer, and into the start of the third quarter of 2021, we should be in good shape. That’s what I am hoping for," Fauci said.
New York State generally had enough hospital beds at the peak of the pandemic in April, hitting a daily high of nearly 19,000 patients, though the state had about 54,000 beds. However, some hospitals were overwhelmed, such as Elmhurst Hospital in Queens.
Fauci said the state's blueprint going forward "seems really sound … You have a lot of backup contingencies, which I like … so you're not going to be caught shorthanded."
But Fauci warned that, without substantial mitigation, "The middle of January could be a really dark time for us" with rising infections from the holiday period.
Hospitals now a key metric
The state has about 35,000 occupied beds out of about 54,000, Cuomo said. The state will expand capacity further and end elective surgery if needed to create more room for coronavirus patients.
The last resort would be to reopen field hospitals that resemble wartime tents full of cots, he said. The state estimates it can ramp up capacity to 58,000 beds for COVID-19 patients. On Monday, 4,602 were hospitalized because of the virus.
If hospitals in a given region are anticipated to hit 90% of their capacity within three weeks, that area will be largely shut down, Cuomo said.
NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island has space available to expand its 500-bed capacity facility, said Dr. Marc Adler, chief medical officer at the Mineola hospital.
A lower-level conference center was converted to care for COVID-19 patients in the spring, he said. "It's fully functional and we can use it quickly if necessary. Fortunately, at this point, we don't need it. We used a lot of nontraditional space during the first wave, and we can pivot up if needed."
Stony Brook University Hospital said Monday it reopened its "forward triage" site at the Ambulatory Care Pavilion to adapt for the growing number of COVID-19 cases. Patients who arrive between 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. will be asked to stay in their cars, where a member of the staff will determine the correct emergency care setting.
The statewide positivity rate for new virus cases from test results on Sunday was 4.79%, including the microcluster zones with higher levels of spread and which are oversampled. Hospitalizations due to the virus grew by 160 statewide, with 22 patients added to intensive care units.
Eighty people died Sunday of coronavirus-related causes.
Fauci said schools have been one of the few bright spots in the pandemic, showing a low rate of infection.
"It originally did surprise me," Fauci said, since typically with the flu children often catch it in school and then come home and can infect their family.
The Massapequa School District's Alfred G. Berner Middle School. Credit: Tara Conry
School and courts take measures
Berner Middle School and Birch Lane Elementary School in Massapequa were on "full distance learning" Monday after positive tests for COVID-19 were recorded over the weekend, officials said.
Two students and "multiple staff" members at Berner tested positive, while one student at Birch Lane tested positive, Superintendent Lucille F. Iconis said.
Because of the statewide virus spike, in-person court staffing is being reduced to 40% or less in courts outside New York City — including on Long Island, New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said Monday.
She said the number of court matters heard in person will be "sharply" limited.
Nonessential personal appearances in civil court are being temporarily suspended, and just a small number of in-person essential and emergency matters will be heard in criminal, family and housing courts, the chief judge said.
In the meantime, the court system "will rely on the demonstrated ability of our judges and staff to resolve cases and deliver justice services in our virtual courts," DiFiore added.
