NY coronavirus total climbs to 11, with family and friends of Westchester patient testing positive for potentially lethal illness
Nine new coronavirus victims, all of them linked to a New Rochelle attorney fighting for his life against the ailment, were identified Wednesday — including his wife and two kids, a suburban Good Samaritan and five members of a second family.
The victims fell like dominoes as the potentially lethal disease cut a scary path through the city’s northern suburbs, with the number of victims now at 11. City officials, after confirming earlier that the infected man’s wife, 20-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter tested positive, announced later that a friend of the lawyer apparently brought the virus home as well. The man, his wife, their two sons and a daughter all tested positive for the virus, officials said.
The ninth victim was the next-door neighbor of the New Rochelle resident, and he apparently became infected while driving the ailing 50-year-old attorney to the hospital last week, officials said.
The patriarch of the second family “spent time with and in close proximity” with the ill Manhattan lawyer, said Gov. Cuomo. The man’s kids attended the Westchester Torah Academy, which was closed Tuesday as word of the sick suburban dad spread.
The stunning news of a second infected family came after hundreds of suburban New Yorkers were asked to self-quarantine inside their homes after officials announced the new confirmed cases.
Tests for possible coronavirus on patients in Buffalo came back negative, as did a test on the husband of the healthcare worker who became New York’s first case of the virus, the governor said.
Cuomo encouraged roughly 1,000 at-risk people to remain inside through Friday and contact health officials if symptoms develop. Most of them were connected in some way with the attorney, and most of those through the Temple Young Israel synagogue in New Rochelle.
Authorities specifically cited worshipers who attended services on Feb. 22, or a funeral service and a bat mitzvah one day later. The sick man also commuted via Metro-North to his law office on E. 42nd St.
“Self-quarantine is basically stay in your home, limit the exposure to the number of people that you might come in contact with,” Cuomo advised.
The infected lawyer, still hospitalized in critical condition at a Manhattan hospital, checked into a suburban hospital on Feb. 27 with respiratory problems that remained undiagnosed until four days later. His family members, along with his helpful neighbor, are currently quarantined at their homes, the governor said.
Yeshiva College, where the son was living in the dorms, canceled classes at its Washington Heights campus on Wednesday. And the Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy and High School in the Bronx, where the teenage girl is a student, voluntarily closed down one day before the diagnosis was made and remained shuttered.
Doctors were also testing the New Rochelle neighbor’s children for any signs of the virus, with eight employees at NewYork Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville also undergoing the same tests, according to Cuomo. The state is also testing the sick man’s colleagues at his Midtown law office.
“There are going to be dozen and dozens and dozens of people — and the more people you test the more will be positive,” the governor warned in announcing the new cases. “You start testing, you’re going to see the number go up.”
Mayor de Blasio said the city dispatched “disease detectives” to the Yeshiva campus to identify any of the student’s close friends who were at risk of infection.
Two students exposed to their stricken classmate were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where both will be tested for the virus. There was no immediate word on the results.
“We will continue working closely with our state partners to ensure we are doing everything we can to keep New Yorkers safe,” said de Blasio.
The man who tested positive Monday for the coronavirus had no known travel links to countries at the center of the outbreak. He remains in critical condition at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in upper Manhattan, according to health officials.
New York state is recalling SUNY and CUNY students from study abroad programs in China, Italy, Iran and other places where the virus is widespread. They will return on a chartered plane destined for Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, Orange County, and then be quarantined for 14 days.