Admissions from nursing homes rang in second, making up 18% of the total, Cuomo said Wednesday at his daily briefing.
“Much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself. Everything is closed down; government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could. Now it’s up to you,” Cuomo said, CNBC reported.
Over three days, 113 New York hospitals provided data on their nearly 1,300 patient admissions and their demographics, according to the New York Times.
Nearly half of the hospitalized people were unemployed and African-American or Latino, the NYT reported. The majority of cases are older individuals, too; nearly three in five patients are over 60 years of age, the outlet said.
At the same time, 57% of the cases came from New York City where only 3% of people there reported using public transportation.
“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” Cuomo said, according to CNBC. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”
But why is that happening after so many battles, arguments and sacrifices were had and made to enforce stay-at-home orders?
The reality is that New Yorkers, along with the rest of the country, aren’t truly staying inside all day, safe from exposure to COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes.
“I think that ‘staying at home’ is more than that,” Nathan Grubaugh, an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology of microbial diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, told McClatchy News in an email.
He mentioned that grocery shopping, walks in the neighborhood, ordering food and grabbing your mail can all expose you to someone who may be infected.
”There are lots of ways to get exposed,” Grubaugh said. “I highly doubt that many people are truly locked in with no outside contact.”
This is where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus guidelines come in handy: wash your hands, wear a face mask, avoid close contact with others and disinfect surfaces as much as possible.
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