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New York governor begs for help amid ‘staggering’ death toll

The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort passes lower Manhattan on its way to docking in New York, Monday, March 30, 2020. The ship has 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms that could be up and running within 24 hours of its arrival on Monday morning. It's expected to bolster a besieged health care system by treating non-coronavirus patients while hospitals treat people with COVID-19. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s governor issued an urgent appeal for medical volunteers Monday amid a “staggering” number of deaths from the coronavirus, as he and health officials warned that the crisis unfolding in New York City is just a preview of what other communities across the U.S. could soon face.

“Please come help us in New York now,” Gov.
Andrew Cuomo said as the state’s death toll climbed by more than 250 in
a single day to a total of more than 1,200 victims, most of them in the
city. He said an additional 1 million health care workers are needed to
tackle the crisis.

“We’ve lost over 1,000 New Yorkers,” Cuomo said. “To me, we’re beyond staggering already. We’ve reached staggering.”

Even
before the governor’s appeal, close to 80,000 former nurses, doctors
and other professionals in New York were stepping up to volunteer, and a
Navy hospital ship, also sent to the city after 9/11, had arrived with
1,000 beds to relieve pressure on overwhelmed hospitals.

“Whatever
it is that they need, I’m willing to do,” said Jerry Kops, a musician
and former nurse whose tour with the show Blue Man Group was abruptly
halted by the outbreak.

He returned to his Long Island home,
where he volunteered to be a nurse again. While waiting to be
reinstated, Kops has been helping at an assisted-living home near his
house in Shirley, N.Y.

The spike in deaths in New York was another
sign of the long fight ahead against the global pandemic, which was
filling Spain’s intensive care beds and shutting millions of Americans
inside even as the crisis in China, where the outbreak began in
December, kept easing.

More than 235 million people — about two
of every three Americans — live in the 33 states where governors have
declared statewide orders or recommendations to stay home.

In
California, officials put out a similar call for medical volunteers as
coronavirus hospitalizations doubled over the last four days and the
number of patients in intensive care tripled.

“Challenging times
are ahead for the next 30 days, and this is a very vital 30 days,”
President Donald Trump told reporters. “The more we dedicate ourselves
today, the more quickly we will emerge on the other side of the crisis.”

In
Europe, meanwhile, hard-hit Italy and Spain saw their death tolls climb
by more than 800 each, but the World Health Organization’s emergency
chief said cases there were “potentially stabilizing.” At the same time,
he warned against letting up on tough containment measures.

“We have to now push the virus down, and that will not happen by itself,” Dr. Michael Ryan said.

More
than three-quarters of a million people worldwide have become infected
and over 37,000 have died, according to a count by Johns Hopkins
University.

The U.S. reported more than 160,000 infections and
over 3,000 deaths, with New York City the nation’s worst hot spot, and
New Orleans, Detroit and other cities also seeing alarming clusters.

“Anyone
who says this situation is a New York City-only situation is in a state
of denial,” Cuomo said. “You see this virus move across the state. You
see this virus move across the nation. There is no American who is
immune to this virus.”

Some hospitals are now parking refrigerated
trailers outside their doors to collect the dead. At two Brooklyn
hospitals, videos posted by bystanders and a medical employee showed
workers in masks and gowns loading bodies onto trailers from gurneys on
the sidewalk.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top
infectious-disease expert, similarly warned that smaller cities are
likely about to see cases “take off” the way they have in New York City.

“What
we’ve learned from painful experience with this outbreak is that it
goes along almost on a straight line, then a little acceleration,
acceleration, then it goes way up,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning
America.”

In other developments around the world:

— Bells
tolled in Madrid’s deserted central square and flags were lowered in a
day of mourning as Spain raced to build field hospitals to treat an
onslaught of patients. The death toll topped 7,300.

— In Japan,
officials announced a new date for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — summer of
2021 — as a spike in reported infections fueled suspicions that the
government had been understating the extent of the country’s outbreak in
recent weeks while it was still hoping to salvage the Summer Games.

— Moscow locked down its 12 million people as Russia braced for sweeping nationwide restrictions.


Israel said 70-year-old Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is
quarantining himself after an aide tested positive for the virus. And in
Britain, Prince Charles, the heir to the throne who tested positive for
the virus, ended his period of isolation and is in good health, his
office said.

Italy’s death toll climbed to nearly 11,600. But in a
bit of positive news, newly released numbers showed a continued
slowdown in the rate of new confirmed cases and a record number of
people recovered.

“We are saving lives by staying at home, by
maintaining social distance, by traveling less and by closing schools,”
said Dr. Luca Richeldi, a lung specialist.

At least six of Spain’s
17 regions were at their limit of intensive care unit beds, and three
more were close to it, authorities said. Crews of workers were
frantically building more field hospitals.

Nearly 15% of all
those infected in Spain, almost 13,000 people, are health care workers,
hurting hospitals’ efforts to help the tsunami of people gasping for
breath.

In a sign of the mounting economic toll exacted by the
virus in the United States, Macy’s said it would stop paying tens of
thousands of employees thrown out of work when the chain closed its more
than 500 department stores earlier this month.

The majority of
its 130,000 workers will still collect health benefits, but the company
said it is switching to the “absolute minimum workforce” needed to
maintain basic operations.

For most people, the coronavirus
causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for
others, especially older adults and people with existing health
problems, the virus can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia. More than
160,000 people have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins.

The
crisis in China, where the outbreak began in late December, continued to
ease. China on Monday reported 31 new COVID-19 cases, among them just
one domestic infection, and the city at the center of the disaster,
Wuhan, began reopening for business as authorities lifted more of the
controls that locked down tens of millions of people for two months.

“I want to revenge-shop,” one excited customer declared.

Japanese automaker Toyota halted production at its auto plants in Europe, but all of its factories in China resumed work Monday.

Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.