COVID-19 killed tens of thousands of people in the northeast, caused high unemployment and destroyed the economy. In a series of ongoing stories, USA TODAY Network Atlantic examines what the government was in its reaction to the virus, what policies worked at the end, and why we remain vulnerable if the coronavirus moves harder in the fall.
The risk of a further increase in coronavirus infections looms after the New York health care formula nearly collapsed last spring under the burden of treating thousands of COVID-19 patients.
From fighting for breathing apparatus and protective masks to invading hospitals that store the dead in freezer trucks, the initial reaction to the New York pandemic was filled with traumatic missteps that took place every day on the national stage.
However, while dozens of other states forget about the hard-won classes in New York now face COVID-19 outbreaks, the Empire State Empire infection rate remains at record levels.
Authorities and fitness officials are developing plans to step back.
“We have the luxury of time right now and we’ll have to move forward to keep a low number and give ourselves more time to prepare for a momentary wave,” said Dr. Michael Mendoza, Monroe County Health Commissioner.
“And if we do this correctly, we’ll probably never see a momentary wave.”
Many promising advances since the spring feature New York’s COVID-19 check infrastructure, which has grown from several hundred checks a day in early March to more than 50,000 checks a day in recent weeks.
Advances in medical remedies for COVID-19, respiratory disease caused by the virus, have fueled hopes that New York can weather the coronavirus typhoon that is ravaging states such as Florida, Texas, and Arizona.
In addition, all new York City hospitals will now have to purchase at least 90 days of medical masks, gowns and other non-public protective devices (PPE) under new state orders. This follows reports that doctors and nurses became inflamed while placing garbage bags and reusing the mask due to scarcity this spring.
However, income-source disparities and race-related deaths due to COVID-19 have highlighted basic gaps in physical care and affordability in New York and across the country that remain unresolved in many respects.
But experts and fitness have pointed out that overall preparation for the New York pandemic has advanced dramatically since the chaotic beginnings that contributed to its national death toll of more than 25,000.
“Every day, we know how COVID-19 spreads, how the virus manifests itself, and the maximum effective remedies to combat it,” said Bea Grause, president of the New York State Health Association, the Albany-based organization that represents hospitals and nursing. Houses.
State officials and fitness service providers are “working hard to prepare for a momentary wave of COVID-19, adding PPE storage,” he added, raising demanding situations such as renewed tension in medical tests and materials due to nationally record-breaking bodies.
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Earlier this year, coronavirus was not controlled in New York City for months due to gaps in the complex network of measures to identify and involve early infectious disease outbreaks.
Problems ranged from the federal government, which incorrectly tracked the initial outbreak of the new coronavirus last fall in Wuhan, China, to fitness officials and hospitals who could not detect their arrival in the United States.
“This led to a small chimney in a town that most Americans had never heard of a global pandemic that inflameed millions of people and killed thousands of others,” said Dr. Gregory Poland, a Mayo clinic and an American infectious disease. Company. Expert.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo noted that the New York epidemic was triggered by millions of Europeans, who arrived before the federal ban on March 16, while the state already had 114 deaths and 15,000 cases.
During this period, the government and scientists also had a limited degree of network and asymptomatic propagation, which helped delay the promotion of masking in public and complicate the tactile search.
“As in a plane crash, when this is dissected backwards, it is a series of false steps that together lead to a greater effect than necessary,” Poland said.
In addition, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention distributed defective kits to states, delaying virus tracking and containment efforts in January and February.
New York introduced its own control on February 29 and did not begin to climb until the end of March, leaving local hospitals and fitness officials unaware of the dangers of viruses.
“We didn’t know what the local prevalence was in our community,” said Mendoza, whose county includes the city of Rochester. “Not knowing this meant that we had to make a lot of decisions with incomplete information.”
Across the state, acute maximum suffering in many low-income communities and minorities devastated by COVID-19 deaths due to limited access to physical care, adding some of the 41 neighborhoods where a hospital has been closed since 2003.
Black and Hispanic New Yorkers, with the exception of New York, account for 31% of COVID-19 deaths in the state and 21% of the population.
However, the extent of COVID-19 disparities only emerged after state officials began publicly publishing knowledge of race and ethnicity on April 8, under pressure from advocates and the media, adding the USA TODAY network.
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Similarly, state officials did not begin to reveal many main points on the spread of coronavirus in nursing homes until April 17, long after a debatable order on 25 March ordering establishments to accept COVID-19 patients from hospitals.
Today, at least 6,300 more people have died in nursing homes in New York relative to COVID-19, or about 25% of all deaths in the state, prompting calls for an independent investigation into the matter.
Amid the initial pandemic chaos, state officials also rushed to create an extra 90,000 hospital beds, turning huge conference centers into transitional hospitals and receiving a floating U.S. Navy hospital.
Much of the overcapacity was left unused as the infections did not meet the initial forecasts due to delays in the effectiveness of social estrangement and public masking.
In many ways, New York politicians and hospital leaders in general were “trying to do the right thing and get advice” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, Poland said.
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The war on the New York pandemic began to revolve after Cuomo ordered on April 15 to be wearing cloth masks or face covers in public, according to research.
The directive required covering the face when others cannot at least six feet of area between them and others in public. This came after COVID-19 instances continued to increase in New York, even though Cuomo issued orders to remain in the house on March 20.
In fact, the researchers found that the use of a mask reduced the number of COVID-19 infections by more than 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9, according to a study conducted through Texas A-M University.
Poland has described the change in New York as almost due to the spread of the virus in the densely populated city of approximately 8.6 million people.
“It is remarkable that this point of the forest chimney is furious and controlling. This is a real time of the strength of those simple … non-pharmaceutical interventions,” he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said New York’s ability to the virus can serve as a style for other states.
“We know that when you do well, those cases. We’ve done it. We did it in New York,” Fauci said in an interview on PBS NewsHour.
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Some states have followed the example of New York in recent weeks.
New Jersey, for example, ordered the use of masks on public equipment on July 8, resulting in a slight increase in COVID-19 infections and considerations of sudden increases in other states without mask requirements.
In addition, this spring’s New York Run to gain up to 30,000 fans, which help to breathe COVID-19 critical patients, highlighted gaps in stocks of state and national emergency medical devices.
New York’s health care formula triggered the epidemic with approximately 5,000 fans, and the state traveled the world to buy thousands more.
However, the foreign avalanche of breathing apparatus has raised costs and exacerbated scarcity. Cuomo said fan costs had risen from $25,000 to $45,000 in components due to the inter-state festival.
While New York ended up with an excess of fanatics, the saga led the federal government to pay nine corporations $2.9 billion for 187,000 respiratory apparatuses to boost national pandemic stocks.
Meanwhile, the medical network has been working with COVID-19 remedies until an effective vaccine arrives.
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Studies involving doctors and patients in New York have contributed to a number of medical discoveries, ranging from the progressive use of additional oxygen to reused antiviral drugs.
“This portrait we called COVID-19 in white 25 weeks ago … and it is nothing less than a miracle the amount of wisdom gained,” Poland said.
Monroe health leader Mendoza explained the progress made since the spring, and mentioned progress in creating and deploying an army of touch tracers to isolate inflamed New Yorkers with COVID-19 and touches of quarantine.
“Now that we have more evidence, if we can insinuate well and if other people cooperate with us, which has been variable, we can move forward and involve any increase,” he said.
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David Robinson is USA TODAY New York’s fitness reporter. It can be [email protected] and followed on Twitter: @DrobinsonLoHud