Cuomo Says New York CCP Virus Deaths Are Down 'For the First Time'

But it's 'too early to tell' whether it's significant

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo holds a briefing on the CCP virus, in Albany, N.Y., on April 5, 2020. (Screenshot via New York Governor's Office Handout)

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday that COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations in New York have dropped, but he cautioned it's too early to tell if the new figures will become a trend.

New York state has now seen 4,159 virus deaths as of Sunday, an increase of 594 fatalities in the past 24 hours, Cuomo said in a news conference. A total of 122,031 people in New York state have tested positive for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, up by around 9,000 cases in the same time-frame.

Cuomo said New York City, the hardest-hit area in the United States, has experienced 67,551 cases of the CCP virus, a type of novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 that emerged in Wuhan, China, last year.

New York could be near its apex of new virus cases and deaths, said Cuomo, but he stressed that it will take several days to know for sure.

“I hope we’re somewhere near the apex, or we’re somewhere near the plateau,” he told a news conference, adding that “the number of deaths has been dropping for the first time.”

The death toll rose by 594 Sunday, while 630 people died Saturday. However, Cuomo stressed that it could be "too early to tell" the significance of the drop in deaths after noting that the death rate dropped "for the first time."

There has been a "shift to Long Island" while "upstate New York is basically flat… as Long Island grows the percentage of cases in NYC has reduced," he said.

A man crosses a nearly deserted Nassau Street in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the financial district of lower Manhattan during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City, New York, on April 3, 2020. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

“The number of beds doesn’t really matter anymore,” Cuomo also said in the press conference. “We have the beds, it’s the ventilators and then it’s the staff. That’s the problem.” He added that New York is working to use anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a method of treatment.

"Every day we ask our healthcare system to do the impossible. They pull off miracles daily to balance patient loads and supplies. Thank you to the hospital administrators and thank you especially & profusely to the frontline healthcare workers. Your service is awe-inspiring," Cuomo also wrote on Twitter Sunday, while reiterating that New York residents need to stay at home to curb the spread of the virus.

The state also released new data showing that the highest virus fatality rate has occurred among people between the ages of 70 and 79, with 942 reported deaths. The age group with the second-highest deaths was 80 to 89, with 918 fatalities

There have been no deaths reported among children under the age of 9 in New York state. Two deaths have been reported among the 10 to 19 age group, according to SILive.

But in a warning on Saturday, Cuomo said the so-called apex of the outbreak is between four and eight days away.

“By the numbers, we’re not yet at the apex. We’re getting closer,” he said on Saturday. “Depending on whose model you look at, they’ll say four, five, six, seven days, some people go out 14 days. But our reading of the projections is that we’re somewhere in the seven-day range. Four, five, six, seven, eight-day range.”