COVID-19: New York reports new one-day record death toll as governor Cuomo says hospitalizations have fallen

A day after New York reported 779 deaths due to coronavirus, city authorities said 799 people had died in the last 24 hours.

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Even as New York has become the epicenter of the virus in America,  Governor Andrew Cuomo said the rate of hospitalizations has fallen. 

"We had a 200-net increase in hospitalizations, which you can see is the lowest number we've had since this nightmare started," Cuomo said.

The New York governor asserted that ICU admissions have also fallen. According to Johns Hopkins university coronavirus tracker, the pandemic has killed over 14,800 people in the United States and infected over 432,000 - the highest in the world.

Cuomo had earlier said the curve was "flattening" even as New York continued to battle the virus.

Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and infectious diseases, said summer holidays "can be in the cards" but added, "we have to be prepared that when the infections start to rear their heads again that we have in place a very aggressive and effective way to identify, isolate, contact, trace and make sure we don't have those spikes we have now."

"It is very likely that we will progress towards the steps towards normalization as we get to the end of these thirty days," Fauci asserted.

"And I think that’s going to be a good time to look and see how quickly can we make that move to try and normalize. But hopefully, by the time we get to the summer we will have taken many steps in that direction," he said.