Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed flights from Europe for the number of coronavirus cases in New York.
“New York did have the highest number of cases, not because we did anything wrong, but because the virus fooled everyone. And we were closing down China, and the virus had already left China and gone to Europe,” Cuomo said Monday during a press conference.
“And by the time we closed Europe, 3 million Europeans had come from Europe and landed in New York airports,” he said. “And it had left Europe by the time we closed Europe. That’s why New York had that cluster. Those flights from Europe come here. They land in JFK. They land in Newark. People take connecting flights. They’re coming here. So that brought the virus here. That’s why we have the numbers we have. OK. But we said, ‘we’re going to do what we have to do, and we’re going to do what we have to do to protect the lives of New Yorkers.’”
Cuomo previously referred to the coronavirus as the “European virus” in a press conference.
“If you had said when we started this, yes we have more cases than anyone else, yes we had this European virus attack us, and nobody expected it, but we are not only going to change our trajectory, we’re going to change the trajectory more dramatically than anyplace else in the nation,” he said last week.
New York has seen the most coronavirus cases in the United States, with nearly 360,000 cases and more than 28,000 deaths, according to the New York Times Monday.
