Three Children Have Died in N.Y. of Illness Linked to Virus: Live Updates – The New York Times

Three young children have died in New York of a mysterious, toxic-shock inflammation syndrome with links to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday.

The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers, Mr. Cuomo said during his daily briefing in Manhattan. This is new. This is developing.

As of Saturday, more than 73 children in New York have been sickened by the rare illness, which has some similarities to Kawasaki disease. Governor Cuomo said many of these children did not show respiratory symptoms commonly associated with the coronavirus when they were brought to area hospitals, but all of them tested positive either for Covid-19 or for its antibodies.

So it is still very much a situation that is developing, but it is a serious situation, he added.

The state will be working with New York Genome Center and Rockefeller University to determine what is causing the illness that Governor Cuomo described on Saturday as truly disturbing.

When the coronavirus pandemic began ravaging the New York area two months ago, the state found solace in the initial evidence that children would be largely unaffected, Mr. Cuomo said. That sense of relief was shattered this week when a 5-year-old died in New York City of the newly discovered disease, which doctors described as a pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.

Mr. Cuomo did not elaborate on the death of the two additional children.

We were laboring under the impression that young people were not affected by Covid-19, and that was actually good news, Mr. Cuomo said. We still have a lot to learn about this virus.

Mr. Cuomo has asked parents to be vigilant in looking for symptoms such as prolonged fever, severe abdominal pain, change in skin color, racing heart and chest pain.

Overall deaths from Covid-19 remained a stubborn problem in the state, Mr. Cuomo said Saturday. He announced 226 more deaths due to the disease, 10 more deaths than the number reported a day earlier.

That number has been infuriatingly constant, he said. We would like to see that number dropping at a faster rate that it is currently dropping.

Despite the setbacks, New York continued to make inroads in its fight against the coronavirus, Mr. Cuomo said.

New hospitalizations for Covid-19 patients had remained relatively flat, hovering in the 600s. On Saturday that trend held true, with 572 new patients being treated at city hospitals for the coronavirus. On Friday, 604 people were hospitalized.

Last weekend, a kind of split-screen photo montage of New York City circulated widely on social media.

One image showed a dense crowd of mostly white people sunbathing in Hudson River Park in Manhattan, apparently flouting social-distancing rules. Another showed a police officer beating a black man in a confrontation that began over an attempt to enforce those rules.

Many people pointed to the two images as evidence that the police were engaged in a racist double standard.

The notion gained further traction Thursday after the Brooklyn district attorney revealed that 35 of the 40 people arrested in the borough for social-distancing violations as of May 4 were black.

On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would address both concerns.

Mr. de Blasio said that the police would limit crowds at two piers at Hudson River Park and another popular park, Domino Park in Brooklyn, starting this weekend.

And concerning the lopsided race numbers in arrests, Mr. de Blasio wrote on Twitter that while summons and arrests were tools for saving lives, The disparity in the numbers does NOT reflect our values. We HAVE TO do better and we WILL.

The M.T.A., which operates the citys subway and bus system, began shutting down the subway system overnight on Wednesday, forcing those who otherwise would have ridden throughout the night to accept shelter offered by city employees or find their own.

The M.T.A. is providing 40 buses at 30 stations, and the vehicles will be controlled by the Police Department after they are dropped off, the transit agency said.

In a statement announcing the move, transit officials reiterated that the M.T.A. is not a social services agency and stressed that the buses were a short-term solution. They called on the city, which requested the buses, to to step up and take responsibility for providing safe shelter for those individuals experiencing homelessness.

To hop on the train, any train, earbuds intact, alone in the crowd on the way somewhere else. To walk out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exhausted as if from a march. The sweet-potato fries and a beer at Tubby Hook Tavern in Inwood; the coffee-cart guy on West 40th Street who remembers you take it black.

Sunday Mass and the bakery after. Seeing old friends in the synagogue. Play dates. The High Line. Hugs.

Ask New Yorkers what they miss most, nearly two months into isolation. To hear their answers is to witness a perfect version of the city built from the ground up, a place refracted through a lens of loss, where the best parts are huge and the annoyances become all but invisible.

The cheap seats in the outfield, the shouting to be heard at happy hour. Meeting cousins with a soccer ball in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The din of the theater as you scan the Playbill before the lights go down.

I miss my gym equipment, said Barbara James of Brooklyn.

The lamb over rice from the food cart by my office, at Seventh and 49th, said Chris Meredith of East Harlem.

Just everything, sighed a police officer sitting behind the wheel of his vehicle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last week. I miss everything.

As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers anyone who can share whats happening in the regions hospitals and other health care centers.

A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.

Reporting was contributed by Michael Gold, Andy Newman, Sarah Maslin Nir, Joel Petterson, Andrea Salcedo, Edgar Sandoval, Matt Stevens and Michael Wilson.

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Three Children Have Died in N.Y. of Illness Linked to Virus: Live Updates - The New York Times