Governor Andrew Cuomo says the number of new coronavirus deaths in New York State has dropped for the first time since the outbreak began, declining daily for the past three days.
The governor says it's too soon to say if that's significant or just a statistical blip, and he says the state's statisticians can't tell him until they get several more days of numbers. But Cuomo says it's possible New York may have hit a plateau in coronavirus infection. The question is, will the numbers then go down, or resume climbing.
The Governor says more than 4,100 people have died, and total new hospitalizations since yesterday are 574. That's much lower than in the past several days. There's more good news: the number of people hospitalized and the number of people who have gotten well and been discharged from the hospital today is roughly the same: about 12,000 each.
Despite that news, the governor says downstate hospitals are still overloaded and critically short both of ventilators for ICU patients and the staff to use them.