Cuomo Opposes Trump’s Proposal for Quarantine of NYC Area (1)

Governor Andrew Cuomo said he opposed a quarantine of the New York metropolitan area, a proposal President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was considering to stop the spread of the virus from the most infected area of the U.S.

“A mandatory quarantine is a scary concept,” he told reporters in Albany, New York. He said he had spoken with President Trump on Saturday but that they didn’t discuss a quarantine.

Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey said Trump had not mentioned the quarantine on a phone call on Friday -- and on Saturday he did not take a firm stance on it.

“When prompted by the president or more often on our own, we’ll continue to be as aggressive as we’ve been and not let up,” Murphy told reporters.

Cuomo said that New York state’s deaths from coronavirus soared on Saturday to 728, from 519, still by far the most in the U.S. The total number of cases rose to 52,318, up 7,681 overnight, he said.

Murphy said New Jersey’s cases had risen to 11,124, with 140 deaths.

Cuomo, outlining the state’s broad preparations for the height of the disease, noted tentative good news in a drop of the number of people hospitalized and admitted to intensive care.

Patients in intensive care require expensive ventilators – and Cuomo said he is seeking to procure 30,000 ventilators for when the disease hits its apex between two and three weeks from now. He said the state would also need 140,000 hospital beds.

“Before you go to war, you make all the preparations you can,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo also postponed the Democratic presidential primary from April 28 to June 23. Income tax filing will be postponed until July 15.

(Added Murphy comments starting in paragraph 3)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Elizabeth Rembert in New York at erembert@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Chakradhar Adusumilli at cadusumilli@bloomberg.net

Linus Chua, James Ludden

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