Two-thirds of New Yorkers hospitalized with the coronavirus were admitted from their homes, a “shocking” statistic that defies social-distancing logic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.
The curious conclusion was reached in a three-day survey of patients hospitalized with the bug conducted this week, and revealed by Cuomo during his daily press briefing.
“Sixty-six percent of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” said Cuomo.
The same survey found that 46 percent were unemployed, and 37 percent retired.
“So, that says they’re not working, they’re not traveling,” said Cuomo. “These people were literally at home.”
Despite the twist, Cuomo doubled down on his calls for social-distancing and personal responsibility, especially as hospitalizations and deaths continue to trend in the right direction.
“It reinforces what we’ve been saying, which is, much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself,” Cuomo told reporters at a Long Island hospital. “Everything is closed down, government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could.”
“Now it’s up to you. Are you wearing a mask? Are you doing the hand sanitizer,” he continued. “If you have younger people who are visiting you and maybe be out there and maybe less diligent with the social distancing — are you staying away from older people?”
And only about 4 percent of respondents — 3 percent among city residents — listed public transportation as their primary way of getting around, though Cuomo noted that 45 percent didn’t respond to that question.
“We thought, maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation,” said Cuomo. “But actually no.”
As only 17-percent of respondents said that they were employed, Cuomo noted that fewer hospitalizations than feared were among front-line workers.
“Predominantly non-essential employees, and that’s important,” said Cuomo.
State officials commissioned the survey to try to better understand how the coronavirus is continuing to spread even as the growth in new cases has slowed dramatically in the weeks after the implementation of social distancing measures.
They also clarified that the source of hospital admissions was simply asking patients where they lived before coming to the hospital — and was not an indicator of their compliance with social distancing guidelines or a potential source of infection.There were 601 new cases reported in a 24-hour period in New York State yesterday, down dramatically decline from early April when officials were recording upwards of 3,200 new positives every day.
New York’s death toll also continued to tick upwards as officials recorded another 232 deaths from New Yorkers who tested positive for COVID-19 on May 5 — essentially unchanged from the 230 and 226 deaths reported the two previous days.
“When people talk about how good things are going and the decline and the progress — that’s all true,” Cuomo said, calling the latest deaths a new addition to “an unimaginable and painful reality.”
The data released by Cuomo’s office also revealed that black and Hispanic New Yorkers accounted for nearly half of coronavirus hospitalizations in the five boroughs, adding new evidence that the pandemic is hitting the Big Apple’s minority communities the hardest.
Just 24 percent of the New Yorkers hospitalized in the Big Apple for coronavirus crisis white, even though they make up 32 percent of the city’s population, the stats released during Cuomo’s daily briefing show.
African-Americans accounted for 25 percent of those hospitalized, Hispanics made up 20 percent and Asian-Americans accounted for another 8 percent.
More than 1 in 5 respondents — 22 percent — fell outside of those broad racial categories and were identified as non-white.
The data also showed that men accounted for slightly more than half of the hospitalizations and that virtually all patients — 96 percent — had an underlying illness.
State officials drew the numbers from a three-day survey of 1,269 patients at 113 hospitals located across the state.
More than four out of five patients surveyed reside in New York City, Long Island or in Westchester or Rockland counties.
The survey and results follow weeks of questions from reporters, intense pressure from civil rights activists and the release of other data that showed minorities are dying at far higher rates than whites in Gotham.
