Gov. Cuomo reveals NY doctors will use anti-malaria drug to treat patients as of tomorrow as he pleads with ALL retired nurses to ‘enlist’ in battle against coronavirus and tells people to ‘settle in’ to quarantine that will last ‘several months’

March 23, 2020 in News by RBN Staff

 

Source: Station Gossip

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that doctors are going to start using the anti-malaria drug touted as a potential ‘miracle’ coronavirus treatment tomorrow as he told Americans to ‘settle in’ to quarantining and warned it would last ‘several months’.

It came as the number of cases of coronavirus in New York City alone rose to 12,000, an increase of more than 3,000 overnight. The governor predicted the current crisis would last ‘several months’ more, doing away with any notion that it might be over in two weeks, as a tweet from President Trump on Sunday night suggested.

Cuomo, while telling people to try to find the ‘silver lining’ in the situation that they’d have more time to spend with family, said New York was working on preventative measures.

Tomorrow, the state’s doctors will start using anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to ‘treat’ patients, Cuomo said.

The drug has not yet been proven as effective in battling the virus, but President Trump drummed up excitement over it when he called it a ‘game changer’ last week.

Doctors are still using it in trials to determine its effectiveness and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House coronavirus expert, said more work was needed before it could be heralded as a solution.

Cuomo said on Monday that New York is also launching a trial later this week to inject seriously ill people with coronavirus anti-bodies in the hope that it will boost their immune systems.

The governor is also taking under advisement the argument that only the most vulnerable must isolate and allow younger, healthier people, to return to work.

There are now more than 20,000 cases in the state of New York, including 12,000 in the city of New York.

More tests are being done in New York than in any other state in the US and testing rates have now surpassed those of South Korea, Cuomo said.

In one night, 16,000 tests were done. That is why the number of positive cases is sky-rocketing.

Of the 20,000 plus cases identified in the state, 157 people have died.

Cuomo said the figures were encouraging: ‘Many will get infected but few will actually pass away from this disease. This is all evolving and this is all evolutionary – there has to be a balance or parallel tracks that we’re going down,’ he said.

The governor has also issued a call to action for all retired, registered nurses to come back to work, and he is mandating that hospitals increase their capacity by at least 50 percent. He wants them to aim to double it.

Thirteen percent of the 20,000 cases of cases in the state are people who have had to be hospitalized. Twenty-four percent of the hospitalizations – nearly a quarter – are in ICU.

The state currently has 53,000 hospital beds, including 3,000. It needs 110,000 beds and between 18,000 and 37,000 ICU beds.

The Army Corps of Engineers is building hospital beds to go up in existing hospitals and make-shift facilities, like one that is being built at the Javits Center.

Medical supplies are also being distributed throughout the state on Monday.

Cuomo has sent out 440,000 masks, 176,000 pairs of gloves, 72,000 gowns, 92,000 face shields and 169,000 N-95 masks.

Cuomo also echoed other state and local leaders slamming President Trump for now enacting the Defense Production Act which would order private businesses to produce certain items needed to combat the crisis.

Instead, states are having to bid against each other and against the federal government – in addition to foreign governments – for the remaining supplies on the world’s market.

‘California offers $4, I offer $5, another state piles in and offers $6.

‘It’s not the way to do it. Why are we competing? Let the federal government put in place the federal defense act. All it does is say to a factory, you must produce this quantity.

‘It cant just be, “hey who wants to help?

‘Let me know.” we need to know who is going to produce and when. That’s a beautiful thing but you can’t run this operation that way – it can’t just be based on we’re waiting for people to come forward on offers.

‘Yes, it’s the government telling private businesses what to do. So what? This is a national emergency. You’re paying them.

‘You cannot continue to do these supplies on an ad-hoc basis.’

Cuomo said he knew isolation would be difficult for people but he urged them to stay ‘socially distant’ and ‘spiritually connected’.

‘Deal with this reality. Understand the negative effects of this.

‘These are personally negative effects. Don’t underestimate the emotional trauma and pain of isolation. It is real.

‘This is not the human condition  – not to be comforted, close to be afraid and you can’t hug someone. Billy and Steve walked in today, I hadn’t seen them in months, I can’t shake their hands, I can’t hug them.

‘This is all unnatural.’

He said one ‘silver lining’ for him was that he now got to spend time with his daughter, Cara, who had come to assist the state government in its handling of the crisis.

Cuomo also used video messages from iconic New Yorkers Danny DeVito and Robert DeNiro, pleading with people to stay indoors.

His announcement came after Mayor Bill de Blasio warned that New York City hospitals were less than a week away from running out of supplies on Monday as the city continued to battle coronavirus and became the ‘epicenter’ of the pandemic in the US.

The city needs ventilators and protective personal equipment for doctors and nurses to ensure they can treat people without becoming infected themselves.

On Monday morning, de Blasio pleaded with the federal government to send help fast, and warned people would begin dying who could otherwise be saved if reinforcements did not arrive soon.

‘We can only get through this week if we don’t get some relief quickly. We will get to a point where people can’t be saved who could have been saved.

‘New York City will have more than it can handle within seven days.

‘It’s moving so fast. Even a few days ago I thought we could safely get into April… now I can’t even say that.

‘If we don’t get ventilators this week, we are going to start losing lives we could have saved,’ he warned.

Trump said on Sunday that ventilators and vital supplies were on their way to New York City and that the national guard had been mobilized to help.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already told of plans to turn the city’s unused public venues into field hospitals.

De Blasio, who has been more frantic in his pleas for help since the pandemic began, said on Monday that he would accept a ventilator from ‘anyone’ who has one.

‘Anyone in the USA who has a ventilator that you can get to NYC, we need it now – I will take any help from anywhere,’ he said.

There has been uproar over President Trump’s handling of the crisis, particularly in his delay of enacting the Defense Production Act.

Trump says he’s using it but governors and mayors say otherwise.

They claim they are being forced to bid against the federal government and foreign countries to get their hands on the ventilators they need, and that there is a pattern of ‘disgusting’ price gouging which hinders them.

De Blasio echoed the Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ earlier comment that the situation was going to become worse before it gets better.

‘This week is going to be worse than the following week.

‘I mean we have to be honest about this.

‘This is just the beginning and I don’t mean that to be anything but blunt and honest with New Yorkers and all Americans.

‘It’s the beginning of something that will get worse throughout April and into May and we’ve got to brace ourselves and we’ve got to change our lives and we absolutely need help from Washington,’ he said.

De Blasio said the number of beds that will be erected in places like the Javits Center – a sprawling expo center – was ‘encouraging’.

‘I think it could be absolutely crucial because we’re at a point literally this week where our public system, the largest in the country, is getting increasingly stressed and running out of equipment.

‘So, that operation at the Javits Center could be a lifesaver for us. We expect to see a lot of that up and running this week.’

Gov. Cuomo said he would also turn some CUNY and SUNY campuses into hospitals.

The USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship with capacity for 1,000 people, is due to dock in the city in the coming weeks.

It will not cater to coronavirus patients but will take in others requiring hospital care in order to free up beds in the hospitals.

New York City closed its bars and restaurants last Monday night. The state has since issued a stay-at-home order which applies to all non-essential workers.

It is a move that is crippling the economy but is vital to preventing the virus from spreading.

De Blasio said on Monday that it was necessary because the ‘human cost’ of not trying to stop the virus was unfathomable.

‘How many members of our family, especially our older relatives, who are the people, you know, really vulnerable here – are we simply saying as a nation we’re going to turn away and ignore the challenges facing them? I don’t think that’s right.

‘I think we have to understand that if we act intensely, we can save thousands, tens of thousands of lives all over this country and stop this thing from becoming even more total and more intense.

‘And we have to recognize, if coronavirus was not checked in some ways and slowed then you’re talking about a health care system that can’t function at all, including for all the people with other challenges, with all the other health care challenges we deal with all the time.

‘So I understand people who say, you know, wow, this is an extraordinary sacrifice. It is.

‘But if you don’t slow this thing down, they’ll sacrifice a lot more on the other end of the equation and we got to think about the human cost here,’ he said.