'It's going to come back here'
New York City reported no new COVID-19 deaths for the first time since the beginning of the outbreak, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) warned of a second wave even as the former U.S. coronavirus epicenter continues to recover, The Hill reported.
Saturday, the city reported no new deaths — either confirmed or probable — and the previous day there were no new confirmed deaths and two that were classified as probable. During the peak of the outbreak in April, New York City recorded 597 COVID-19 deaths on its worst day.
Still, Cuomo is already warning of a future second wave of the virus that he believes will hit the city because of increased case numbers in the southern and western regions of the U.S.
"You're going to see our numbers and the Northeast numbers probably start to increase because the virus that you see now in the South and the West — California has real trouble — it's going to come back here," Cuomo told Spectrum News on Friday. "It is going to come back here. It's like being on a merry-go-round. It's totally predictable. And we're going to go through an increase. I can feel it coming. And it is so unnecessary and so cruel."
Although the number of COVID-19 cases is increasing in places like California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, the rate of new deaths is not keeping pace with the number of new cases, and as more data comes in, the devastation the virus caused in New York City in the spring still appears to be an outlier.
Large increases in COVID-19 cases, many of which are patients with mild or no symptoms, are being framed by some public officials and media outlets as evidence the pandemic is spiraling out of control in the U.S.
However, projections from the White House coronavirus response task force in March claimed that the best-case scenario for the U.S. was 100,000 to 240,000 deaths during this wave of the virus—as of Monday, fewer than 140,000 people have died, and the number of COVID-19 deaths has trended downward in the U.S. since its late April peak.
