NEW YORK, March 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — New York is deploying National Guard troops for the first time in the coronavirus crisis to help contain the
spread of the disease from an infection-hit suburb of New York City, the
state’s governor said.
Andrew Cuomo said authorities would set up a one-mile radius “containment zone” around the epicenter of an outbreak in New Rochelle in suburban Westchester County.
Cuomo explained that all facilities in the zone that hold large
gatherings, such as schools and temples, would be closed for two weeks
beginning Thursday.
“We’re also going to use the National Guard in the containment area to
deliver food to homes, to help with the cleaning of public spaces,” Cuomo
said.
There have been 173 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New York state,
including 108 in Westchester County, home to New Rochelle where the majority of infections have been detected.
Cuomo told reporters that businesses in the containment zone will remain
open and that people will be free to come and go as they wish, insisting
there is no quarantine.
“You’re not containing people, it’s facilities,” he said.
“It is a dramatic action, but it is the largest cluster in the country.
This is literally a matter of life and death,” Cuomo added.
The area is centered on a synagogue in New Rochelle — a city of 80,000
inhabitants just north of New York City — that was attended by a man who was the state’s first case, a lawyer working in Manhattan.
His wife, Adina Lewis Garbuz, posted on Facebook that it had taken health officials “days” to figure out he was infected.
“As many have asked, of course he went to the doctor and did so many
times. No one figured it out and it even took the hospital days to figure it
out,” she said, reporting that the rest of her family was in good health.
At least one of the employees at the hospital where Garbuz’s husband was
treated contracted the virus, and others, including doctors, were under
quarantine.
The United States has more than 950 confirmed cases of the deadly virus,
according to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Twenty-eight people have died, 23 of those in Washington state, the other
US virus epicenter.
No one has died in New York. — NNN-AGENCIES
