'There's some progress’: De Blasio says there have been positive trends in NYC
Mayor Bill De Blasio says there have been encouraging signs in the city’s fight against the coronavirus outbreak.
Video Transcript
BILL DE BLASIO: Why are we telling you there's some progress? Well, this is about the facts. First of all, the ventilator use-- we've talked so much about ventilators. They are lifesaving. This is the way you ensure that someone God-- God forbid, they're in distress. This disease is close to taking their life, and a ventilator can save their life-- help them keep breathing, help the doctors and nurses see them through.
The question until very, very recently-- just a few days ago-- was, would we have enough? And that was based on the fact that we saw some very clear patterns in the use of ventilators. And, in the last few days, we've actually seen fewer ventilators needed than were projected.
And that's very, very important. We expected a really deep intensification of this struggle. We expected the number of ventilators to keep being needed to be more and more going into this week. We've seen actually much fewer needed than we expected.
Now, to be clear, we still need more, meaning that there's still, each day, more people who need them, but much less than expected. That's a good sign. The hospitalizations have stabilized. For a long time, that just kept going up and up. We're now seeing some leveling off, again, based on only a few days. But something good on that front, too, that's telling us something positive.
