The majority of admitted COVID-19 patients in New York are residents who have submitted to the precaution of staying home, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The governor was stunned that 66% of novel coronavirus hospitalizations are residents who are either unemployed, retired, or not commuting to work regularly.
On Wednesday, Cuomo demonstrated the results of recent hospitalization data that was procured from hospitals in a new targeted attempt to further diminish the total of new hospitalizations per day.
The state of New York obtained 1,269 survey responses from 113 hospitals over 3 days and discovered that the majority of citizens hospitalized were not traveling or working. They were predominately in residence in downstate New York and were predominately minorities, non-essential employees, older individuals, and people who were staying at home.
Numbers show that 96% of the surveyed coronavirus patients had co-morbidities, meaning that they had an underlying chronic medical condition before contracting the virus.
Also, according to the survey, COVID-19 disproportionately impacts African Americans and Hispanics residing in the NYC area.
New York is reportedly the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The state has been undertaking lockdown for 6 weeks, yet more than 20,000 people are still acquiring positive test results weekly, according to official counts.
The next largest source of admissions to hospitals was from nursing homes, totaling 18%.
According to Cuomo, "If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us."
During a briefing on Long Island, Cuomo said that they initially believed that they were perhaps riding public transportation and they have implemented special advisories on public transportation, but they later found out that "these people were literally at home."
According to statistics, 6% of new confirmed cases that sprung up were unemployed and 37% were retired from work.
Cuomo said that they initially believed that they were going to discover a larger percentage of essential employees who were contracting the coronavirus because they were employed; that these may be doctors, nurses, and transit workers.
Of the new confirmed cases, 6% were unemployed, while 37% among them were retired. Age played a factor with the data showing that 73% of people admitted to the hospital were 51 and older, according to the survey.
"Disproportionately older, but, by the way, older starts at 51 years old. I'm a little sensitive on this point, but if older starts at 51 years old, then that's a large number of us old folk in this state, in this country," said Cuomo.
The New York governor said they underscore the requirement for citizens and their families to double-down on protection with crucial things including masks, hand washing, and staying away from high-risk or vulnerable people.
The tally of coronavirus patients has declined but not as steeply as anticipated.
Cuomo added that most of the hospitalizations have been concentrated in New York City and surrounding suburbs, which have been remarkably affected by the pandemic.
