BREAKING NEWS: New one-day high in coronavirus deaths in US pandemic epicentre New York

CORONAVIRUS deaths in New York have surged to a new one-day high.

Another 731 people have lost their lives to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, state governor Andrew Cuomo reported at a press conference today Tuesday.

“Behind every one of those numbers is an individual. There’s a family, there’s a mother, there’s a father, there’s a sister, there’s a brother. So a lot of pain again today for many New Yorkers,” Cuomo commented.

“This virus is very good at what it does and it kills vulnerable people, that’s what it does.”

To date coronavirus has claimed the life of 5,489 people in New York, representing more or less half the US’s total death toll of some 11,000.

Cuomo said the latest figures on fatalities were a “lagging indicator”, referring to the likelihood they were patients admitted to hospital and had passed away after several weeks of care.

On the positive side, both the governor and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said there had been a drop in the number of hospital and intensive care admissions in the last few days.