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Deaths in N.Y. fell to 422, the lowest one-day figure since April 1.
Deaths from the coronavirus continued their gradual descent, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday, with the state recording 422 more deaths, the least since April 1. The state death toll now stands at 16,162.
Other indicators of progress against the virus continue to show improvement, too, though New York was still being hit harder than any state in the nation:
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The three-day average of the number of virus patients in hospitals had fallen 11 days in a row. It had dropped by more than 3,000 since last Friday, and was down nearly 25 percent since its peak on April 13, according to statistics cited by the governor.
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The number of patients who were intubated, and therefore least likely to survive, had fallen for 12 days in a row, the governor said.
One area of concern remained the number of new hospital admissions. After dropping almost 35 percent from last Friday to Tuesday, it had fallen only another 5 percent since then.
“That’s basically a flat line, and that is troubling,” Mr. Cuomo said.
The influx of patients reflected the fact that the state was still averaging about 6,000 new virus cases per day.
That was down from almost 11,000 per day during the first week of April but still more than any other state. New York had 271,621 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
The mood in New York City darkens as the pandemic begins to feel endless.
A walk in the park brings tense flare-ups: Back off, you’re too close. Oh really? Then stay home. A loud neighbor, once a fleeting annoyance of urban life, is cause for complaint to the city. Wake at noon, still tired. New York City’s can-do resilience has given way to resignation and random tears.
The journey that began in March with an us-against-it unity, with homemade masks and do-it-yourself haircuts and Zoom happy hours, has turned into a grim slog for many.
Evidence of that mood shift could be seen in little spikes on the EKG of data compiled by the city.
Complaints to 311 rose in telling categories. A near-doubling of reports of loud televisions in the past five weeks compared with the same period last year, from 400 to 794, suggests an I’ve-had-enough drawing of lines. There were 16,901 calls in a brand-new category, lax social distancing.
Elsewhere, traffic to news sites flattened after the surge that accompanied the virus’s arrival, according to data from the website Chartbeat, a strong indicator of news fatigue.
The most recent weekly survey of 1,000 New York State residents, about half of them from the city, by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy asked how socially connected people have felt. Just over two in five said “not at all.” That was about double the number that answered that way four weeks earlier.
Forty percent of the latest poll’s respondents said they had felt anxious more than half of the time in the past two weeks; 32 percent said they had felt depressed.
“This is the week where I feel like I have accepted this, and given up,” Euna Chi of Brooklyn wrote in an email. “My daily commute to the couch feels ‘normal.’”
“I dare you”: Cuomo stepped up his attacks on McConnell’s bankruptcy suggestion.
Governor Cuomo raised the ante on Friday in his attacks on Senator Mitch McConnell’s comments that states facing gaping budget deficits should declare bankruptcy rather than receive more federal aid.
Mr. Cuomo said that states could not legally declare bankruptcy, and he dared Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, to pass legislation letting them do so.
“Your suggestion, Senator McConnell? Pass the law. I dare you,” Mr. Cuomo said. “You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that.”
New York is projecting a $61 billion drop in tax revenue over four years because of the coronavirus, Mr. Cuomo said, and he has stressed that only an infusion of federal money could get the state back on its feet.
On Wednesday, Mr. McConnell had said that Senate Republicans were disinclined to offer additional assistance to local governments and that he favored “allowing states to use the bankruptcy route.” His office amplified the message in a news release under the heading “Stopping Blue State Bailouts.”
That evening, Mr. Cuomo called the bankruptcy comment “one of the saddest, really dumb comments of all time.”
On Thursday, he called Mr. McConnell “the grim reaper,” and added: “Think of what he is saying: People died. 15,000 people died in New York, but they were predominantly Democrats, so why should we help them?”
On Friday, Mr. Cuomo called Mr. McConnell’s bluff: “If you believe what you said, and you have the courage of conviction because you’re a man of your word, pass that bill if you weren’t just playing politics,” he said. “We’ll see how long it takes him to do it.”
Reporting was contributed by Michael Gold, Andy Newman and Sarah Maslin Nir.
