The rate at which the deadly coronavirus is spreading in New York is "accelerating" like a bullet train coming towards the region as the number of confirmed cases in the US state "is doubling about every three days," Governor Andrew Cuomo has warned.
As of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed cases in New York hit 25,665 and 271 people died. The US has the third-highest number of confirmed cases globally, behind China and Italy.
According to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker, there are at least 55,041 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States and over 700 people have died.
We have the most sophisticated people you can get doing projections on this. They've been studying projections from China, South Korea, Italy, places all across this country. And what they're now seeing is that the rate of cases, the rate of new infections, is doubling about every three days. That is a dramatic increase in the rate of infection, Cuomo said on Tuesday.
His remarks came during a visit to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a sprawling convention centre in Manhattan, where The Federal Emergency Management Agency has started to build a 1,000-bed temporary hospital that will help increase New York's hospital capacity to combat the COVID-19.
Cuomo said the new facts and figures are "not encouraging", adding that the increase in the number of cases continues unabated.
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"As a matter of fact, the rate of increase has gone up.We're not slowing it, and it is accelerating on its own. One of the forecasters said to me, we were looking at a freight train coming across the country, we're now looking at a bullet train, because the numbers are going up that quickly.
He added that the most challenging point about the increasing numbers is where the numbers will apex and what is the high point of the numbers.
The apex is the point where the state has to be able to manage capacity. We had projected the apex at about 110,000 hospital beds... The new projection suggests that the number of hospital beds needed could be as high as 140,000. We haven't flattened the curve and the curve is actually increasing, he said.
At the rate the number of new cases is increasing, Cuomo said currently there are 53,000 hospital beds and 3,000 ICU beds but the anticipated need when the cases reach the apex is 140,000 hospital beds and approximately 40,000 intensive care unit beds.
Those are troubling and astronomical numbers and are higher numbers than have been previously projected. We are exercising all options as aggressively as we can.
That rate of increase, that apex, they project at this time could be approximately 14 to 21 days away. So not only do we have a spike in the increase in cases, it accelerates the apex to a point where it could be as close at 14 to 21 days, he said