April 7, 2020 / Berkeley Lovelace Jr., William Feuer, Noah Higgins-Dunn
Coronavirus deaths in New York surged by 731 on Monday, the biggest single-day jump in COVID-19 fatalities since the outbreak began a few months ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.
The jump in fatalities comes even as the number of intensive care admissions starts to decline, giving the state some needed breathing room to ramp up supplies and staff to handle an expected wave of cases over the next few weeks, he said. So far, 5,489 people in the state have died from the coronavirus, accounting for roughly half of all deaths in the U.S. 
“Behind every one of those numbers is an individual, is a family, is a mother, is a father, is a brother, is a sister. So, a lot of pain again today,” he said at a press conference in Albany.
The number of deaths is a lagging indicator of the number of hospitalizations, Cuomo said. Those people were admitted to hospitals at the peak and weren’t successfully treated, Cuomo said, adding that they were placed on breathing machines, and “the longer you are on a ventilator the less likely” you will survive.