More than 100 new coronavirus cases were confirmed in New York City over the course of Tuesday, with officials expecting an exponential rise in the coming days.
There are currently at least 923 confirmed COVID-19 patients in the city, up from 814 reported cases earlier Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on MSNBC.
“It’s unbelievable how rapidly this crisis is growing right now,” de Blasio said Tuesday night.
The mayor reiterated that residents should prepare for an unprecedented “shelter-in-place” order to contain the coronavirus. The mayor expects as many as 10,000 cases of the disease in the Big Apple by next week.
“I didn’t even know by the time I got to your show there would be 100 more people, but what I said earlier today is this is moving very fast,” de Blasio said. “We should all be very concerned about how we find a way to slow the trajectory of this virus.”
“The idea of shelter in place has to be considered now. It has to be with between in our case the city and state working together,” the mayor added.
De Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo sparred Tuesday over whether such plans were in the works, with the governor dismissing the idea during an appearance on NY1 earlier Tuesday evening.
“If New York City says, ‘Well you can’t come out of your house, all that will do is cause you to stay with your cousin in Westchester,” Cuomo said, adding that he’s working on coordinating restrictions with Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut.
“There’s not going to be any quarantine,” he added.
Hizzoner admitted on MSNBC he has “differences” with Cuomo — joking that the two could share a “social distance hug” — but said the two have worked together throughout the pandemic.
“This has to be done with the state because it’s the only way it works, and if it happens, it’s because the state thinks it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
The mayor stressed the need for an “intensive federal intervention” to protect the most impacted New Yorkers.
“My concern is right now if we don’t see an intensive federal intervention, providing income replacement…a serious effort to keep people as whole as possible, you will see household budgets collapse,” de Blasio said.
“And what I worry about, when we think about shelter-in-place is, we are going to have to anticipate the possibility that a lot of people are going to need food brought to them, brought to their neighborhoods,” the mayor went on.
“Not just soup kitchens as we know them today, but something more like saw in the 1930s: mass feeding operations — I don’t say that to be apocalyptic; I say it to be practical.”
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