New York City should be “ready” to stay closed through May because the coronavirus outbreak is “going to get worse before it gets better,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.
De Blasio was speaking on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ as his city currently deals with more than 23,000 confirmed cases.
“We have to be real honest about where this is going. I can tell you right now we have enough supplies to get through this week and next week in our hospitals,” he said. “That’s all I can guarantee you. And after that, unfortunately, we think this crisis is going to grow – through April and into May. That’s the truth."
“Some days we see numbers that make us a little hopeful,” de Blasio added. “But I don’t want to give people a false hope and then they get hit with a ton of bricks if it turns out it’s not real.”
De Blasio reiterated his prediction that more than half of New York City’s residents ultimately will catch the coronavirus — but, citing what medical professionals have seen so far, says 80 percent of the population will only experience cold and flulike symptoms they will be able to recover from in seven to 10 days.
He also said he doesn’t see Easter as a realistic date to allow businesses to start reopening.
And for the time being, de Blasio says New York City is still in dire need of ventilators to treat coronavirus patients.
“We need help now. When the president says the state of New York doesn’t need 30,000 ventilators, with all due respect to him he is not looking at the facts of this astronomical growth of this crisis,” de Blasio said. “And a ventilator... means someone lives or dies. It’s as simple as that.”
“This is the greatest country in the world,” he added. “We should be producing all the ventilators possible over these next weeks, because all parts of this country are going to need them.”
