Long Island Coronavirus Death Toll Tops 500

The number of people who have died of coronavirus on Long Island has increased to more than 500 one month after the first diagnoses in the region, officials in Nassau and Suffolk counties said Monday.

The 580 fatalities on LI include 381 Nassau residents and 199 Suffolk residents, or 12 percent of the New York State total of 4,758 as of Monday. The pandemic has claimed 10,252 lives nationwide and 73,703 worldwide.

“We mourn every loss and I know how hard it is for families who cant mourn in the usual ways,” Nassau County Executive Laura Curran told reporters Monday, noting how funerals are prohibited under social distancing guidelines.

Curran added that a spike in Nassau’s numbers from 149 on Saturday to 381 on Monday was due to the fact that the county was initially verifying the residence of patients who succumbed to the virus before releasing statistics, but has since begun using state data instead.

“Because of the escalation of numbers of people who are dying from COVID-19, I am now relying on [the] state’s number, because their verification process is much quicker than ours,” she said.

The development came as the number of cases on Long Island rose to 29,103 on Monday, with 15,616 in Nassau County and 13,487 in Suffolk County. There were 130,689 case statewide, 344,554 nationwide, and 1.3 million worldwide.

On a positive note, both county executive also noted that the number of patients being admitted to hospitals for coronavirus has decreased in recent days, suggesting that the region could be reaching its apex, but they urged caution not to stop social distancing yet.

Nassau still had 2,196 COVID-19 patients hospitalized and 545 in intensive care units Monday. Suffolk had 1,463 hospitalizations and 546 in ICU.