By Julia Hollingsworth, Adam Renton, Rob Picheta and Fernando Alfonso III, CNN
New York's social distancing plan to help mitigate the spread of coronavirus will be extended “in coordination with other states” to May 15, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today.
“What happens after then, I don’t know. We will see depending on what the data shows,” Cuomo said.
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo says New York has gotten control of the spread of coronavirus in the state.
"We've controlled the beast. We brought the rate of spread down," Cuomo said today.
Cuomo discussed infection rate models shared by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early on during the pandemic and how they have not come to fruition.
"If their rate of spread actually happened, we would have been in a much, much worse situation and we would have been in a really bad place. I mean their projections were staggering and it didn't happen because we slowed the models," he said.
From CNN's Elise Hammond
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out coordinated steps to "unpause" the state's economy at a press conference today.
He said this effort spans from now to when there is vaccine for coronavirus.
Cuomo said the first step is to "do no harm."
"Don't let that infection rate go up to the best of your ability. Don't lose the progress that you have made," he said.
Second, the state will need to strengthen the health care system. Cuomo said because every hospital had to increase capacity by 50% to handle the surge of coronavirus patients, it is important to ensure they have the resources to recover.
"Now we have a chance to be more intelligent, frankly, about handling our health care system," he said.
Reopening the economy will also need widespread testing and contact tracing –– something Cuomo said the federal government needs to help with.
Cuomo also outlined a plan for a phased return to "normal" and reopening of businesses and schools slowly and in coordination with each other.
"You stopped everything. How do you then restart that machine in a coordinated way that doesn't drive up the infection rate? That's the balance that we're trying to strike," Cuomo said.
From CNN's Adrienne Vogt
Society will be greatly altered in the future because of the coronavirus pandemic, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his daily briefing.
"This is going to be a moment of transformation for society, and we paid a very high price for it," Cuomo said.
"There are lessons that we must learn from this. Because we do need to do things differently, or we can do things differently, and we can do things better," Cuomo added.
Cuomo said testing is "the single best tool to make informed decisions and to calibrate all of this."
Cuomo also said private businesses, not just the government, needs to figure out how to adapt to a new normal, calling for workplaces to reimagine how employees work every day.
New York has done more coronavirus testing than California, Florida and Michigan combined, according to figures shared by Gov. Andrew Cuomo today.
"We've done 500,000 tests in 30 days," Cuomo said. "That's more than California, Florida and Michigan combined. And this is all about figuring it out first and taking a system that frankly didn't exist and creating this testing system and this testing regimen. Five hundred thousand tests in one month. That sounds great, and it was great. It was a great accomplishment. And congratulations to everyone who put it together. But when you think of 500,000 tests in one month and then you compare it to the fact that you have 19 million people in this state, you have 9 million workers, the 500,000 doesn't sound so big, right?"
New York currently has 214,832 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 14,000 deaths, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said there's a drop in the number of hospitalizations across New York.
"Hospitalization rate is down from 18,000 to 17,000 mark. That is good news. Total hospitalizations down. We talked about the flattening of the curve, the apex, how long is it flat, when does it start to curve? We don't know, but this is a good sign today," Cuomo said moments ago at a news conference.
Net hospitalizations across New York are "down more significantly than it has been, so that's positive news," Cuomo added.
"ICU admissions number is also down significantly for the first time, so that's good news. Intubations is down and that's really good news because intubations ultimately lead to the worst news; 80% roughly of people who get intubated never come off the ventilator," Cuomo said.
Roughly 2,000 people were diagnosed with Covid-19 Wednesday in New York, Cuomo added.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said 606 people died in the state on Wednesday.
That is down from 752 people across the state who died the day before.
From CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on farm production will be “way worse” than the trade war, said Brian Duncan, Vice President of the Illinois Farm Bureau.
American farmers have weathered a nearly two year trade war with China – who put tariffs on US farm products in retaliation to the US’s tariffs on Chinese goods. But Covid-19 has had a more dramatic and faster effect.
“Prices for most commodities have fallen 30-60%. It was swift and sudden,” said Duncan, who is also a soy, corn and hog farmer in Polo, Illinois.
The impact of the coronavirus is particularly bad on farmers and ranchers who produce livestock and dairy. Unlike corn and soy farmers, those sectors were not previously helped by the federal government in bailout programs related to the trade war.
Hog prices are down nearly 50% and milk down 36% since January according to the American Farm Bureau.
“What's happening to livestock futures prices for hogs, cattle, and dairy due to Covid-19 is like catching a falling knife,” said John Newton, Chief Economist with the American Farm Bureau.
In the meantime the Trump administration has allocated $16.5 billion for farmers as part of the CARES Act, and Secretary Perdue said the aide will be distributed soon.
“It’s not going be enough,” said Duncan. “It’s a good start but the longer this goes on, the more money we will need.”
From CNN's Amanda Watts
There are now at least 640,014 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US.
So far, 31,002 people have died due to the virus, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
As states begin to include “probable deaths” in their counts, so will Johns Hopkins. In the upcoming days, these changes may show a surge of deaths in the US.
Johns Hopkins has reported 1,903 new cases and 158 reported deaths today.
The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as all repatriated cases.