Here’s what you need to know:
- About 100 children in N.Y. are suspected of having a rare illness tied to the virus.
- With parts of N.Y. set to reopen, Cuomo again pushes for federal aid.
- N.J’s governor outlined plans for contact tracing and more testing.
- Lin-Manuel Miranda will help woo tourists back to N.Y.C.
- N.Y.C. is expanding testing and tracing, but a limited reopening is weeks away.
About 100 children in N.Y. are suspected of having a rare illness tied to the virus.
New York State health officials are investigating about 100 cases of a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome that afflicts children and appears to be connected to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday.
So far, three deaths in the state have been linked to the illness, which is known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome and causes life-threatening inflammation in critical organs, Mr. Cuomo said.
More than half of the state’s pediatric inflammatory syndrome cases — 57 percent — involved children ages 5 to 14.
Earlier in the day, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 52 cases of the syndrome, which has symptoms that overlap with those of toxic shock or Kawasaki disease, had been reported in New York City, and that 10 potential cases were being evaluated.
The dead included a 5-year-old boy, who died last week in New York City; a 7-year-old boy in Westchester County and an 18-year-old girl on Long Island.
“This is a truly disturbing situation,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily news briefing. “And I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned about this, and they should be.”
Hospitals across the state should make it a priority to test any children displaying the syndrome’s symptoms for the coronavirus, the governor said.
Mr. Cuomo’s announcement came as he reported 195 more virus-related deaths in the state, an increase from Monday’s total but the second consecutive day that the toll was under 200.
The pediatric illness began to appear in the region in recent weeks, and doctors and researchers are still investigating how and why it affects children.
Connecticut reported its first cases of the syndrome on Monday. As of Tuesday, six children in the state were being treated for the ailment, officials said.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced three of the Connecticut cases at a briefing on Monday.
“I think right now it’s a very, very tiny risk of infection,” he said. “It was not really ever detected in Asia, which, I don’t quite know what that implies.”
Three other children were being treated for the syndrome at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, a spokeswoman, Monica Buchanan, said on Tuesday. Two of the three were confirmed to have the illness, Ms. Buchanan said.
New Jersey health officials said on Tuesday that they were investigating 10 potential cases of the syndrome, none of which were fatal.
With parts of N.Y. set to reopen, Cuomo again pushes for federal aid.
With New York making steady progress in its battle against the virus and three upstate regions poised to start a gradual reopening by this weekend, Mr. Cuomo on Tuesday reiterated the importance of federal aid as the state charts its recovery.
The number of people hospitalized in New York continued to decrease, Mr. Cuomo said, one of the key metrics that officials are monitoring in assessing whether the outbreak’s severity is waning.
The number of new daily hospitalizations has fallen close to where it was on March 19, just before Mr. Cuomo issued executive orders shutting down much of the state.
“We’re making real progress, there’s no doubt,” Mr. Cuomo said. “But there’s also no doubt that it’s no time to get cocky, no time to get arrogant.”
While sounding that warning, Mr. Cuomo urged lawmakers in Washington to give state and local governments whose budgets have been ravaged by the pandemic the financial help they need to rebound.
“To get this economy up and running, we’re going to need an intelligent stimulus bill,” Mr. Cuomo said.
New York state needs an estimated $61 billion in federal support to avoid enacting 20 percent cuts to schools, local governments and hospitals, Mr. Cuomo said.
He also said it would be impossible for New York to resume business as normal without the money it needs to develop a sophisticated testing and contact tracing apparatus.
It is unclear whether Congress will give Mr. Cuomo the help he is seeking. Like President Trump, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, said he last month that he did not support what he has labeled a blue state bailout.
Mr. Cuomo called Mr. McConnell’s characterization “one of the really dumb ideas of all time.”
N.J’s governor outlined plans for contact tracing and more testing.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey on Tuesday outlined plans for the testing and contact tracing of the virus that he said would be critical to reopening the state’s economy.
Still, Mr. Murphy made the case that New Jersey — which, with New York, has been at heart of the pandemic in the United States — is now more affected by outbreak than other states. New Jersey, he said, had overtaken New York and Connecticut in the rate of new infections and deaths.
“There are still thousands in our hospitals, and sadly an untold number more will perish,” Mr. Murphy said, while noting that the number of hospitalizations, deaths and new cases had plunged since their mid-April peak.
To continue to beat back the outbreak, New Jersey officials said they planned to test up to 20,000 people a day by the end of May. The state will also deploy hundreds of contact tracers to determine who has had close interactions with a sick person, Mr. Murphy said.
The state’s goal, the governor said, was to recruit a racially diverse group of tracers who speak various languages and identify closely with the communities where they will work. The job pays around $25 an hour, he said.
The drop in the number of new virus cases means that the state can consider a limited reopening, Mr. Murphy said, but he warned impatient residents about the risk of loosening restrictions too soon. After closing parks and golf courses in early April, the state reopened them on May 2. Mr. Murphy did not say which businesses may be the first to reopen.
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Murphy announced 198 new deaths — 139 more than were reported the day before — for a total of 9,508. About half of the fatalities involved nursing home residents. The daily report of new deaths in New Jersey may include deaths that occurred weeks ago and were only recently confirmed.
“Those numbers don’t lie,” Mr. Murphy said. “We are still the most impacted state in America.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda will help woo tourists back to N.Y.C.
The puzzle of how to revive New York City’s tourist trade is so vexing that city officials are pulling together a group of industry experts — and one of the biggest names on Broadway — to try to solve it.
On Tuesday, the city’s tourism agency, NYC & Company, said it was establishing the Coalition for NYC Hospitality & Tourism Recovery. Among the group’s leaders: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, lyricist and actor who created the musical “Hamilton.”
The coalition’s task is to come up with a plan for wooing people back to the city once it starts to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, a chapter that appears to be months off at least after the Broadway League said on Tuesday that its members were canceling shows through Sept 6.
“It is time to consider how we can begin to reopen our doors and safely reconnect with our city and with each other, and with the visitors who will one day again flock to New York,” said Charles Flateman, NYC & Company’s chairman and executive vice president of the Shubert Organization.
Joining Mr. Flatemen and Mr. Miranda at the group’s helm are Ellen Futter, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, which recently announced a number of layoffs; Thelma Golden, the Studio Museum in Harlem’s director and chief curator; the restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Peter Ward, the president of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council.
Before the pandemic struck, NYC & Company was forecasting an 11th straight year of increased tourism. In 2019, the city had more than 66 million visitors who generated about $70 billion of economic activity that supported 400,000 jobs, according to the agency’s estimates.
“Together, we will create a next act for our city,” Mr. Miranda said in a statement.
N.Y.C. is expanding testing and tracing, but a limited reopening is weeks away.
Mr. de Blasio on Tuesday announced an expansion of coronavirus testing and tracing across New York City, but he warned again that a limited reopening of the city was weeks away at best.
Twelve new testing sites will be set up in the next three weeks in a push to double the public hospital system’s testing capacity, the mayor said at his daily news briefing. The city was also training 535 contact tracers, with a goal of having 2,500 in the field by early June.
Still, the city, the pandemic’s U.S. epicenter, has met just four of the seven criteria required to start to reopen, Mr. Cuomo said on Monday while announcing that three upstate regions had achieved all of the necessary benchmarks.
Mr. de Blasio has said he is closely monitoring three measures in weighing the city’s progress toward reopening: the number of new virus infections; the number of infected patients in intensive care units; and the percentage of residents testing positive for the virus.
“Clearly, these indicators are not getting us the kind of answers we need to change our restrictions in May,” the mayor said. “You’ve got to have 10 days to two weeks of consistent, downward motion. We haven’t had that in a sustained way at all.”
More than 20,000 deaths in New York City have now been linked to the virus, according to data from the city’s Department of Health.
Connecticut moves toward reopening as top health official is ousted.
With Connecticut nearing the May 20 date that officials have set for starting a gradual reopening, Gov. Ned Lamont said on Tuesday that the state continued to make steady progress in stemming the coronavirus outbreak.
Mr. Lamont, speaking at a daily news briefing, reported 33 new virus deaths, eight fewer than on Monday. The virus has now been linked to 3,041 deaths in Connecticut.
“Hopefully the fatalities continue to go down,” Mr. Lamont said.
The governor also said the total number of patients hospitalized with the virus had fallen to 1,189 from 1,212. He reported 568 new confirmed virus cases, which he suggested was in line with an increase in testing.
Mr. Lamont’s briefing came several hours after he said he was replacing the state’s public health commissioner, Renee Coleman-Mitchell, who had been in the job about a year. She had not been at his daily briefings in recent weeks.
The governor did not discuss his reasons for making the change, saying only that he had appointed the state’s social services commissioner, Deidre Gifford, to fill the post for the time being.
Ms. Coleman-Mitchell’s “service over the last year has been a great deal of help, particularly in the face of the global Covid-19 pandemic that has brought disruption to many throughout the world,” Mr. Lamont said in a statement.
In a statement issued by a lawyer, Ms. Coleman-Mitchell said she had been told by members of the governor’s staff that the move “was not related to job performance.”
“I am proud of the work of the Department of Public Health during this time of unprecedented turmoil and threat to the public health,” she added.
Tell us about the moments that have brought you hope, strength, humor and relief.
The coronavirus outbreak has brought much of life in New York to a halt and there is no clear end in sight. But there are also moments that offer a sliver of strength, hope, humor or some other type of relief: a joke from a stranger on line at the supermarket; a favor from a friend down the block; a great meal ordered from a restaurant we want to survive; trivia night via Zoom with the bar down the street.
We’d like to hear about your moments, the ones that are helping you through these dark times. A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.
Reporting was contributed by Andrea Salcedo, Maria Cramer, Michael Gold, Patrick McGeehan, Jesse McKinley and Azi Paybarah.
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