NYC virus deaths exceed 3,200, topping toll for 9/11 attacks

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed the number of those killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11, health officials said Tuesday.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in intensive care with the virus.

At least 3,202 people have died in New York from COVID-19, according to the count released by the city.

The deadliest terror attack on US soil killed 2,753 people in the city and 2,977 overall, when hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001.

New York state recorded 731 new coronavirus deaths, its biggest one-day jump yet, for a statewide toll of nearly 5,500, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

“Behind every one of those numbers is an individual. There’s a family, there’s a mother, there’s a father, there’s a sister, there’s a brother. So a lot of pain again today for many New Yorkers,” he said.

But in an encouraging sign, Cuomo reported that hospital admissions and the number of those receiving breathing tubes are dropping, indicating that measures taken to force people to keep their distance from one another are succeeding.

And alarming as the one-day increase in deaths might sound, the governor said that’s a “lagging indicator,” reflecting severely ill people who had been hospitalised before this week.

Over the past several days, in fact, the number of deaths in New York appeared to be levelling off.

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