Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said New York was working with the C.D.C. to investigate a mysterious illness linked to the coronavirus that causes life-threatening inflammation in children.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio said 38 children in New York City had been sickened by a mysterious ailment linked to the coronavirus, an increase from 15 reported Monday.
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Three children have died in N.Y. of a mysterious syndrome linked to the coronavirus.
Three young children have died in New York of a mysterious, toxic-shock inflammation syndrome with links to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday.
“The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers,” Mr. Cuomo said during his daily briefing in Manhattan. “This is new. This is developing.”
As of Saturday, more than 73 children in New York have been sickened by the rare illness, which has some similarities to Kawasaki disease and was publicly identified for the first time earlier this week.
Governor Cuomo said many of these children, some as young as toddlers, did not show respiratory symptoms commonly associated with the coronavirus when they were brought to area hospitals, but all of them tested positive either for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, or for its antibodies.
“So it is still very much a situation that is developing, but it is a serious situation,” he added.
The state will be working with the New York Genome Center and Rockefeller University to determine what is causing the illness, which Governor Cuomo described on Saturday as “truly disturbing.”
When the coronavirus pandemic began ravaging the New York area two months ago, the state found solace in the initial evidence that children would be largely unaffected. That sense of relief was shattered this week when a 5-year-old died in New York City of the newly discovered disease, which doctors described as a “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.” The inflammation of the blood vessels, Mr. Cuomo said, causes “problems with their heart.”
Mr. Cuomo did not elaborate on the deaths of the two additional children. Overall in the state, he reported 226 new virus deaths, 10 more than were reported Friday.
New cases and deaths continue to drop in New Jersey.
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The number of new coronavirus cases and the number of people hospitalized with the illness in New Jersey continued to drop, Gov. Philip D. Murphy said Saturday.
Mr. Murphy reported 1,759 new cases, a drop of more than 200 from the day before; that brought the total number of cases in the state to 137,085, as of Friday night, he said. He also announced 166 new deaths in the state.
“Our battle here is not a battle to just bring down numbers,” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s a battle to save lives.”
The picture remained bleak at nursing homes. There have been more than 26,000 cases and 4,825 deaths, Mr. Murphy reported on Saturday, accounting for more than half of the total number of deaths in the state.
Why the reopening of New York City is still so far off.
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Nearly 190,000 people were tested for the coronavirus in New York City over the past two weeks. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans to hire 1,000 disease detectives to track down the contacts of every infected New Yorker.
The city is also paying for hotels to house people who cannot quarantine in their cramped apartments, and it may use the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens for the same purpose.
And Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has established a framework for reopening New York State, based on seven concrete, health-related milestones, soliciting advice from dozens of advisers from the upper echelons of New York’s business world.
Still, despite all the plans and initiatives, the reopening of New York City remains a long way off.
The factors that made the city the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic — its density, tourism and dependence on mass transit — complicate a return to normalcy. The city, which has had more than 19,000 virus deaths so far, is still far from meeting the public health metrics necessary to reopen, from available critical-care beds to new hospital admissions for the virus.
And New York State is moving cautiously, anticipating a partial reopening later this month, mostly in rural areas.
So how long might it take to restart New York City’s economy?
“Nobody can tell you,” Mr. Cuomo said last week.
The key to reopening is containing the virus, and that will take a vast infrastructure of testing and contact tracing unlike anything the United States has ever seen, public health experts say.
Even when the new public health apparatus is fully staffed and running, it will merely lay a foundation for businesses and residents to feel safe returning to work and play. Many may choose to stay home.
A true reopening of the city, Mr. de Blasio said this month, remained “a few months away at minimum.”
Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you’re seeing.
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As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what’s happening in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers.
A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.
Reporting was contributed by Maria Cramer, J. David Goodman, Edgar Sandoval, Andrea Salcedo and Michael Rothfeld.
