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"We are ahead of this virus," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his daily news briefing on Friday, May 8 at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.
Cuomo announced that the hospital, infection, and fatality rates continue to drop, as the state keeps taking measures to combat the virus.
“The good news is that we’re finally ahead of this virus,” he said. “For so long we were playing catch up. If you really look and talk about the facts and circumstances (surrounding the virus), we’ve been playing catch up since the beginning.
“I feel for the first time, we’re actually ahead of this,” he said. “We showed we can control the beast, just look at the numbers. Remembers our numbers are coming down in New York, but in most states you still see the numbers going up.”
“If you take New York out of the national numbers, you see that the cases are on the incline. We have the beast on the run. We haven’t killed the beast, but we’re ahead of it.”
For a look at New York's trend in COVID-19 cases compared to the rest of the nation, see the first image above.
In the past 24 hours, there were 2,938 newly confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, 604 new hospitalizations, and 216 deaths, all down from the previous day.
Since the outbreak began, 1,121,543 New Yorkers have been tested for the virus, with 330,407 confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, which resulted in 21,045 fatalities.
According to Cuomo, the bulk of new COVID-19 cases have been in Latino and African American communities across the state, largely in high-density areas.
Of the 21 zip codes with the most new hospitalizations for the virus, 20 have greater than average African American and Latino populations, he noted. The state also released data on COVID-19 fatalities by race. (See second and third images above.)
Cuomo said that the virus is on the decline, and cases are going down due to the “dramatic measures” New Yorkers have taken since before the virus hit its apex.
“Rates are going down, and that’s all good news, and I feel like for the first time we’re ahead of the virus. Rates are going down, so that’s all good news, and I feel we’re ahead of it,” he said. “But we have to stay there and figure out the next move the virus is going to make, and we have to stay ahead of it if we cant to be in charge of our own destiny.
“There’s a clear cause and effect, which is liberating. We finally control our own destiny, our own future. It’s in our hands, we’re not subject to the whims of the virus,” he continued. “We are in control of the spread of the virus, and that’s good news to me. We just have to stay there.”
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