COVID-19 Update 05/06/2020

Cuomo Data

Cuomo cites data showing majority of hospitalized patients contracted COVID-19 while at home

New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that the majority of recent COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, hospitalizations were of people who were self-isolating in their homes, a fact that he called “shocking” at his daily press briefing today.

“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” Cuomo said. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”

Inexplicably, the majority of new cases weren’t of essential or frontline workers or even people in prison but of people who were literally not leaving their houses.

Data from 100 New York hospitalized that looked at 1,000 patients found that 66% of patients contracted the virus despite being at home, with the next largest group being nursing home residents at 18%.

Cuomo said that 84% of hospitalized coronavirus patients were staying home and not taking public transportation frequently if at all, and that 73% of COVID-19 patients are 51 years old or older.

“We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work,” Cuomo said. 

Additionally, he explained that a majority of the cases are coming from downstate New York, primarily New York City, and that the patients are largely people of color.

Read more about this in this article: CNBC News

De Blasio, DoH officials concerned COVID-19 might bring on Kawasaki disease in children

New York City Department of Health Building. New York City. Credit: Beyond My Ken, Wikimedia Commons

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in his daily press briefing yesterday that New York City health officials are concerned about a rare disease that seems to be affecting children who have or had the coronavirus.

Health officials have identified at least 15 pediatric cases of this inflammatory disease that seems similar to Kawasaki disease, according to de Blasio. 

De Blasio said that the number of cases is “enough for sure to say even though it’s uncommon compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who have contracted, this disease is still causing us concern. If any child is experiencing these symptoms, particularly in combination, call your doctor right away. ”

Kawasaki disease, most commonly found in children, can cause high fever and swelling in blood vessels, as well as abdominal pain, vomiting and a rash.

Only four of the 15 patients tested positive for the coronavirus, but of the 11 that tested negative, six tested positive for antibodies for the virus, indicating that they had coronavirus previously.

All of the children had a fever and over half had either a rash, abdominal pain, vomiting or diarrhea. Less than half of them had respiratory issues, presumably the four that tested positive for the virus.

The World Health Organization announced last week that it is investigating to see if Kawasaki disease is related to the coronavirus after a few cases of the disease were reported in Europe.

Read more about this in this article: CNBC News

Brooklyn woman discharged from rehab center after recovering from COVID there for a month

Rehab Woman: credit: Screenshot from a video (Special to Kings County Politics)

A Brooklyn woman was discharged from Canarsie’s Atrium Rehabilitation Center Facility yesterday to rousing applause from the staff after a month-long stint at the center.

Alice, whose last name was not given to protect her privacy, was at the rehabilitation center for a whole month after contracting the coronavirus.

She was finally discharged yesterday, and she was given a long round of applause from the staff who lined the halls of the center as she was wheeled out to the lobby.

Once in the lobby, she was greeted by her daughter, who immediately hugged and kissed her mother. Alice said that she’s grateful to be able to come home before Mother’s Day, which is tomorrow.

Read more about this in this article: Eyewitness News

Queens teen survives coronavirus, despite almost being at death’s door

Queens Teen: credit: Screenshot from a video (Special to Kings County Politics)

A Queens teenager survived the coronavirus and is now fighting to walk on her own again after being hospitalized for three weeks.

Karla Duarte, 16, is a junior at John Bowne High School in Flushing. She first came down with the virus in late March, when it started with an ear itch that developed into a high fever and a dry cough.

Her mother then got her admitted to the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park on March 29, where she received experimental IV medications and was soon placed on a ventilator to help her breathe.

The ventilator and medically induced coma weren’t doing enough to help her, though, so Duarte’s doctor, the hospital’s Director of Pediatric Critical Care James Schneider, had to put her on an Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation device, also known as ECMO.

“She had severe respiratory failure,” he said. “It was either try ECMO or she risked not surviving.”

It was his first time using ECMO on a patient with coronavirus, and it is what ended up keeping Duarte alive.

Within seven days, her condition had turned around and she was able to be taken off the ventilator. When she woke up, the first thing she saw was her mother, Ana Tejada, who had stayed with her the entire time she was in the hospital, relaying messages to the rest of their family in Queens Village through text.

Duarte was discharged from the medical center on April 19, three weeks after first being admitted, and some of the staff came in on their day off to be able to say goodbye to her.

“I’m still shocked I made it through,” Duarte told Pix11 News. “My body and myself went through so much.”

The teen is still struggling with the aftereffects of the virus, walking with a walker, due to being in medical paralysis, until she regains the muscle strength to walk on her own.

“I absolutely love all of them,” she said. “The whole medical staff at Cohen. They saved my life. They are my second family. They’re the reason why I’m here.”

Read more about this in this article: Pix11 News