Cuomo: Coronavirus spreading like ‘bullet train’ in NY as cases top 25,000

Tens of thousands of people in coronavirus-ravaged New York are “going to die” unless President Trump and the feds up the ante on the ventilators they’ve promised, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday, as officials tallied more than 25,000 cases and 200 deaths across the Empire State.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency had provided just 400 ventilators by Tuesday morning despite the worsening crisis and repeated requests from Cuomo for 30,000 of the machines as the pandemic threatens to hit hospitals like a “bullet train.”

“You want a pat on the back for sending 400 ventilators?” a furious Cuomo asked during a press conference Tuesday at the makeshift hospital being built at Manhattan’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. “What are we going to do with 400 ventilators?

“You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die,” said Cuomo — so incensed that he misstated the 29,600 New Yorkers who would be left out in the cold.

Just hours after blistering Trump and FEMA, the feds promised to provide Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio with another 4,000 desperately needed ventilators — still a far cry from the 30,000 that Cuomo said the state will need as the wave of infections crests next month.

“The president said it’s a war,” Cuomo said. “Act like it’s a war!”

That new guarantee came after Trump fired back during a Fox News town hall, accusing Cuomo of ignoring a 2015 recommendation by a state Department of Health panel that New York buy 16,000 more ventilators in advance of a pandemic.

“He had 16,000 ventilators that he could have bought and he didn’t . . . He should’ve ordered the ventilators,” Trump said.

The president was referring to media reports on a 2015 state Health Department audit, which found New York had an average of 2,836 ventilators free at any given time. That would be sufficient for a worse-than-usual flu outbreak but nowhere near the 18,619 machines needed for a once-in-a-century flu, like the 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million people worldwide.

The Cuomo administration report did not recommend the state stock up, instead determining that the expense was too much and there would be insufficient staff to man the machines even if there were an outbreak.

“This was a five-year-old advisory task force report, which never recommended the state procure ventilators,” said Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever. “It merely referenced that New York wouldn’t be equipped with enough ventilators for a 1918 flu pandemic.

“No one is, including Mr. Trump,” she added.

Later, City Hall celebrated when it found out about the additional 4,000 ventilators — half of which are bound for the Big Apple, according to Mayor de Blasio.

“I need everyone in Washington to understand that it’ll just get us to the first week of April, even with this new supply,” de Blasio said. “It is something that literally is going to be the difference between life and death for thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers.”

Tuesday at 10 a.m, New York has seen 131 of the state’s 210 deaths, and 14,776 of its 25,665 cases, de Blasio said.

By 6 p.m., the Big Apple had lost another 61 people to the frightening illness as the death toll hit 192. The overall caseload in the five boroughs jumped to 15,597.

Additional reporting by Jacob Henry and Bob Fredericks