WILL WALKEY, NEWSCASTER: From Columbia Radio News in New York, I’m Will Walkey.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said today that New York State is flattening the coronavirus curve. New infection rates in the state are starting to level off. And the number of patients in ICU’s has dropped for the first time since the epidemic began. But the death toll remains high.
Yesterday, 777 people died due to complications with COVID-19, though that is down slightly from the day before.
GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO: As someone who searches for solace in all this grief, the number of leveling off in all of the lives lost is a somewhat hopeful sign.
WALKEY: But with hundreds dying each day, the city must move quickly to bury the dead. Startling drone footage released by Reuters today shows rows and rows of white wooden coffins stacked three deep and two wide down long trenches in a public cemetery on Hart Island. Mayor Bill DeBlasio said the dead were people without friends or family to claim them.
Five new coronavirus testing sites will open in New York City in the coming days. The first ...a drive-through facility in a Sears parking lot in Flatbush...opened this afternoon. Governor Cuomo says testing sites are placed strategically in lower income, minority communities, which data shows are being hit the hardest by the Coronavirus.
Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to ask the federal government to freeze rents for New York City’s public housing residents. He said on WNYC this morning that he will get an answer today for the 400,000 plus who live in NYCHA facilities.
MAYOR BILL DEBLASIO: Clearly, this is the greatest economic crisis since the depression. I think it’s quite clear why a rent freeze makes sense. [trim breath]
WALKEY: And finally, just as Passover seders and services moved online earlier this week… cathedrals and churches around the city are commemorating Good Friday today via live stream to comply with social isolation requirements. In Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Manhattan, priests sang in front of a webcam and empty pews. They plan to do the same on Easter Sunday.
For Columbia Radio News, I’m Will Walkey.