Cuomo surprised most NY coronavirus hospitalizations are people who stayed at home

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Gov. Cuomo: 66 percent of new hospitalizations in New York are people who were at home

Reaction and analysis from Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that 66 percent of the state's new coronavirus patients were sheltering in place at home before seeking medical attention in hospitals, calling the statistic "shocking."

“If you notice, 18 percent of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1 percent came from jail or prison, 2 percent came from the homeless population, 2 percent from other congregate facilities -- but 66 percent of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” Cuomo said during his daily COVID-19 briefing.

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"[They're] disproportionately older -- but by the way, older starts at 51 years old," he continued. "But if older starts at 51 years old, then that's a large number of us old folks in this state, in this country."

The data was taken from a three-day survey of 113 New York hospitals, covering more than 1,200 patients, according to Cuomo.

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"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," he added. "Only 4 percent were taking public transportation. Two percent were walking."

Cuomo also said only 17 percent of the patients were employed and most patients were not considered to be essential workers. Thirty-seven percent were retired and 46 percent were unemployed.

"Much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself," he explained. "Government has done everything it could. Society has done everything it could. Now it's up to you. Are you wearing the mask? Are you doing the hand sanitizer... Are you staying away from older people?"

As of Wednesday, New York had the most confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S. with more than 321,000 and the most deaths with over 25,000.

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Nationwide there are more than 1.2 million cases of COVID-19 and over 72,600 deaths. The U.S. has conducted over 7.5 million tests, which amount to 2,298 tests per 100,000 people.