(Bloomberg) -- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo celebrated completing “the impossible task” of controlling the novel coronavirus, urging other states to follow his lead by relying on facts and being deliberate in reopening their economies.
Without those actions, 100,000 people would have been hospitalized for Covid-19 and potentially dead, Cuomo said Friday at his last planned daily virus briefing. After 111 days of fighting the largest outbreak among U.S. states, New York “will be better and stronger for what we have gone through,” he said.
All of New York’s regions are in the process of reopening, and the virus epicenter, New York City, takes a big economic step Monday by allowing restaurants to resume outdoor dining and other businesses to open their doors.
Cuomo’s daily appearances, drawing 59 million viewers, elevated his national status and helped soften a prickly image among New Yorkers. The briefings even earned the single governor many secret and public admirers and the nickname “the Love Gov,” as people urged the third-term Democrat to run for president. Though he declined, the 62-year-old divorced father of three daughters was viewed by some as a welcome contrast to President Donald Trump, whose response to the coronavirus pandemic has been criticized as too slow and erratic.
Though Cuomo often refrained from criticizing Trump, he has said repeatedly that health experts and federal officials were mistaken when they focused on the virus’s path to the U.S. from China and not on the one from Europe. More than 3 million people came to the country via the East Coast before a travel ban, through New York area airports, which is why the city was so hard hit, Cuomo has said.
The governor is not emerging from the crisis unscathed. He has come under heavy criticism for his handling of Covid-19 patients in nursing homes, where so many of the elderly and medically vulnerable perished. House Republicans including Steve Scalise of Louisiana this week called on Cuomo and other Democratic governors to explain why nursing homes were told earlier in the outbreak that they had to accept Covid-19 patients from hospitals.
In a Wednesday tally, the most recent figures available, New York had 385,760 cases and nearly 25,000 fatalities. At the peak of the outbreak, almost 19,000 of the state’s residents were hospitalized with Covid-19. As of Wednesday there were 1,358 hospitalizations. Also at its peak, New York recorded 800 deaths in one day. The latest count had 25.
The state has conducted more than 3 million tests. Of those tested Wednesday, less than 1% were positive. At its peak, more than 50% of the tests were coming back positive.
New York has reopened by regions and in phases. Cuomo urged other governors to do the same, as cases spike in states including Florida, California and Texas.
Cuomo held his final briefing alone in his office, a contrast to previous appearances where he has been flanked by members of his administration. The governor said he had given them the day off because of their hard work and to mark Juneteenth, commemorating the end of slavery in America.
As he concluded, Cuomo said New York must lead on police reform, on “building back better” with infrastructure and technology, economic recovery, protecting the environment and a “new era” on civil rights and social justice.
One of the points Cuomo has repeatedly made over the past few months was that Covid-19 has put a spotlight on racial inequities. The virus hit poor and minority neighborhoods the hardest, and highlighted their lack of access to affordable health care, he said.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.