NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo said schools across the state would remain closed for the rest of the academic year as cases of coronavirus surpassed 300,000.
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Cuomo said that K-12 schools and college facilities will remain closed for the rest of the academic year and will continue to provide distance learning for the remainder of the academic year.
"We're going to have the schools remain closed for the rest of the year," Cuomo said.
The governor said the state is asking schools to come up with a plan to reopen. He said the state will approve the plans.
Cuomo said a decision about summer schools will come by the end of May and that there has been no decision about the fall.
"There is no decision on the fall, because the fall is a long time away," the governor said.
Cuomo, who said last week a decision on extending his New York Pause order was coming in "about a week," said that decision is now coming sometime before May 15, when the current order is up. The order will affect non-essential businesses that have been closed for over a month because of the outbreak.
There were 304,372 coronavirus cases statewide as of Friday—up from 299,691cases Thursday.
Deaths rose by 289 to 18,610, Cuomo said, while emphasizing deaths could have been much higher.
"New Yorkers literally changed reality and reversed the spread," Cuomo said, noting the positive change since a month ago, when cases were spiking.
"You saw that number change from that up trajectory to the downward trajectory. That shift in the trajectory reduced by about 100,000 the number of New Yorkers who would have been hospitalized," Cuomo said. "A portion of those 100,000 would have passed away."
"All this inconvenience, all this turmoil, for what? To keep 100,000 people out of hospitals. That's for what," Cuomo said.
He said there were still about 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the state each day, with 954 new cases from Thursday to Friday.
More than 10,900 were currently hospitalized, Cuomo said.
Speaking of mental health, the governor said there was a "dramatic" and "frightening" increase in domestic violence cases in the state. They were up 15 percent in March and 30 percent in April.
"This is a national epidemic," he said, urging New Yorkers in need to text the New York State Domestic Violence Help Line at 1-844-997-2121.
The governor also directed all health insurers to waive all cost sharing, copays and deductibles for mental health services for essential workers. There have been a number of suicides reported in recent days of frontline workers, including an FDNY EMT and a top ER doctor in New York City.
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