Coronavirus: with 100 dead, New York calls for national containment from Trump

Bill de Blasio and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo re-launched calls on the federal government to order private companies to manufacture respirators and masks, which are sorely lacking in the United States, as in many others. country.

“Yes, this is an assertion of government power over private companies, so what?” It’s a national emergency, ”said Andrew Cuomo. “We can no longer continue to be supplied on an ad hoc basis,” he hammered.

Trump caught in the crossfire

So far, Republican Donald Trump has resisted imposing such measures, worried about their impact on the economy, even though about one in three Americans is already expected to live in confinement.

“We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” he tweeted on Monday, as the US Senate again failed to agree on a major stimulus package for the economy.

Later, he even said that the United States would “very soon” reopen to business, “much sooner than three or four months as someone suggested. Much earlier ”.

At first, the president had minimized the epidemic ensuring that everything would be fine. He then gradually changed his tone, but was caught in the crossfire. He knows that his re-election will depend on his ability to get the country out of the doldrums. However, the health system in the United States is very poorly prepared for a pandemic. Unemployment benefit claims are starting to explode. Donald Trump, who made his economic success his main campaign argument, has seen all the gains accumulated on the stock market since taking office in early 2017, collapse in a few days.

For the city of New York alone, the mayor called for the urgent dispatch of “hundreds of respirators and hundreds of thousands then millions of masks”. “If they don’t start arriving this week, we’ll get to the point where people cannot be saved when they could have been saved,” he warned.

New York is also awaiting help from the National Guard and the US Army Corps of Engineers to install additional hospital beds. The Javits Center conference center in Manhattan is to be transformed into a hospital with a capacity of 1,000 beds, pending the conversion of certain hotels, now deprived of tourists. Andrew Cuomo, who went there on Monday, said he hoped it would be ready within “a week to 10 days”.

Buses and yellow taxis circulate for caregivers

The governor also signed an executive order requiring New York hospitals to increase their capacity by 50% – to reach 75,000 beds – while calling on them to aim for 100%.

A hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, with a capacity of 1000 beds, is also due to leave for New York in two weeks, according to the Minister of Defense Mark Esper.

New Yorkers, accustomed to traffic jams and crowds, were adapting as best they could to this new reality made up of almost deserted streets, construction sites at a standstill, closed schools or drawn iron curtains.

Buses and yellow taxis continued to circulate, in particular to allow health professionals and emergency services to work, but often ran empty.