The rate at which the deadly coronavirus is spreading in New York is "accelerating" like a "bullet train" coming towards the region as the number of confirmed cases in the US state "is doubling about every three days," Governor Andrew Cuomo has warned.
As of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed cases in New York hit 25,665 and 271 people died. The US has the third-highest number of confirmed cases globally, behind China and Italy.
According to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker, there are at least 55,041 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States and over 700 people have died.
"We have the most sophisticated people you can get doing projections on this. They've been studying projections from China, South Korea, Italy, places all across this country. And what they're now seeing is that the rate of cases, the rate of new infections, is doubling about every three days. That is a dramatic increase in the rate of infection," Cuomo said on Tuesday.
His remarks came during a visit to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a sprawling convention centre in Manhattan, where The Federal Emergency Management Agency has started to build a 1,000-bed temporary hospital that will help increase New York's hospital capacity to combat the COVID-19.
Cuomo said the new facts and figures are "not encouraging", adding that the increase in the number of cases continues unabated.
"As a matter of fact, the rate of increase has gone up..We're not slowing it, and it is accelerating on its own. One of the forecasters said to me, we were looking at a freight train coming across the country, we're now looking at a bullet train, because the numbers are going up that quickly." He added that the most challenging point about the increasing numbers is where the numbers will apex and what is the high point of the numbers.
