Saying that the war against COVID-19 is not yet over and characterizing the present time as “halftime,” Gov Andrew Cuomo (D) said that New York would begin an aggressive program of antibody testing in the state.

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed 41,837 and sickened nearly 785,000, according to the most recent figures.

The area in and around New York has been the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States.

Public health professionals and state governors say that building a large-scale testing program is going to be a foundation for loosening the lockdown conditions in place across most of the country.

 “Antibody testing means you test a person to find out if they have the antibodies which they would have if they were infected with the coronavirus and we are going to do that in the most aggressive way in the nation where we are going to sample people in this state, thousands of people in the state, across the state to find out if they had the antibodies,” Cuomo said. “That will tell us for the first time what percent of the population actually has had the coronavirus and is now at least short-term immune to the virus. This will be the first true snapshot of what we are really dealing with.”

Indications are now that the hospitalization rate in the state is trending down, according to Cuomo.

“Total hospitalization rate is down again in the state of New York. We are down to 16,000. If you look at the numbers we are at 18,000 people hospitalized for a period of time,” he said. “Flattened there for a while, paused there and then went down 17,000 but this is allow from our high point of 16,000. Big question of whether we have been past the apex, past the high point and turned out the high point wasn’t a point but the high point was a plateau and we got up to a high point and then we just stayed at that level for a while, but if the data holds and if this trend holds, we are past the high point and all indications at this point is that we are on a decent, whether or not the decent continues depends on what we do, but right now we are on a decent. That’s in all the numbers. The hospitalizations numbers are down.”

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