In hindsight, the city’s actions came late. The day the stay-at-home orders were announced, New York City reported 4,000 new cases — despite a significant shortage of testing. The outbreak was well into the acceleration phase. And with a bigger head-start, the virus kept growing in the city, with new cases peaking 17 days later on April 6.
5. Nursing Homes
As the virus swept through nursing homes — and the city was in an urgent search for hospital beds — the question arose of what to do with elderly patients who recovered.
On March 25, the state made what now appears to be an ill-fated decision to send those people back to nursing homes once they were well enough to leave the hospital. Two months later, Cuomo said the state had followed the federal government’s guidance, and made the rules when the state was scrambling for hospital bed space.
“Is the best use of a hospital bed to have somebody sit there for two weeks in the hospital bed when they don’t need the hospital bed, because they’re not urgently ill? Cuomo said at a press briefing on May 20. “They’re just waiting to test negative.”
Statewide, there have been 5,980 presumed and confirmed Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes and adult-care facilities as of May 24. New York has now changed its rules for sending patients back to the homes, saying hospitals can’t do so until a patient tests negative for the virus.
Unknowns and the Future
Even with the factors that made New York a hot spot, it’s still unclear why it got hit harder than other similarly dense areas. Also unknown are how weather, potential variants of the virus, testing and counting of cases and other factors play a role. And the outbreak is just now breaking over new hot spots like Brazil.
“It’s important to recognize the pandemic isn’t over yet,” Butler said. “Some areas are going to be hit earlier than others.”
Much of New York City’s risk from an outbreak remains. It will forever be a tightly packed city dependent on public transportation, defined by public spaces and close human interaction.
“What caused New York City to be hit so hard is something we’ll be studying for a long, long time,” de Blasio said in his statement. “On the one hand, it’s frustrating to think of how things may have been different had we known any of this earlier. On the other hand, it’s informative as we move to reopen.”
In its push to resume activity, the city and state are now considering how to stop the transit system from becoming a disease vector again.
“We anticipate just phase one is easily hundreds of thousands of more people going to work, and then phase two even more so,” de Blasio said. “We still have to make sure that we don't end up with a lot of crowded subway cars and buses. It's got to be very systematic. You need the frequency of the service, you need the face coverings, you need some way to make sure that there isn’t overcrowding.”
Shaman said he’s optimistic that some of the tools are in place to better manage the virus, but that the U.S. hasn’t succeeded so far — though to be fair, few countries have.
“We failed on both ends,” Shaman said. “We disrupted the economy and haven’t controlled the disease.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.