Westchester County, New York was one of the first and fastest growing coronavirus hotbeds in the country, racking in almost 5,000 cases. There were 225 in the suburb of New Rochelle alone. On Wednesday, however, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was happy to announce that the number of cases had dramatically dropped.
Cuomo points to good news from Westchester County: "We have dramatically slowed what was an exponential increase.” pic.twitter.com/C1y0WuN7dN
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) March 25, 2020
"In Westchester we have dramatically slowed what was an exponential increase," he said. "Can you slow the rate of infection? Yes. How? That was the hottest cluster in the USA. We closed the schools, we closed gatherings, we brought in testing."
The state got creative. Gov. Cuomo announced the introduction of the first drive thru coronavirus testing site in New Rochelle, where individuals can drive up and self administer a test, putting health care workers out of harm's way and freeing up desperately needed personal protective equipment for clinics and hospitals.
It is, we must note, a bit of a different story in New York City. Cases are spiking there every day. But again, Cuomo has been aggressive in asking the federal government for more resources, including thousands of new beds and ventilators.
New York will also be the first state to conduct clinical trials of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, zithromax, and chloroquine. They'll also begin testing plasma therapy, which tests plasma from patients who have recovered from the virus to a current patient. Similar convalescent plasma projects were used previously during the SARS and Spanish flu outbreaks.
Some other good news? Almost 118,000 people have now recovered from the virus.
117,749 have recovered from the Corona virus https://t.co/50nRytzy6r
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) March 26, 2020