Nassau has 3rd-highest number of Covid-19 cases of any county in state

Surpasses Westchester and the Bronx for infections

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Nassau County had the third-highest number of coronavirus cases of any county in New York as of Saturday, surpassing Westchester, Bronx and New York counties. 

New York County includes all of Manhattan.

That's according to the state Department of Health's newly implemented Covid-19 tracker, found at covid19tracker.health.ny.gov.

In his daily briefing Saturday, Governor Cuomo described the virus as a "fire spreading" across Long Island.

As of Saturday, Nassau had 13,346 coronavirus cases, compared to 13,081 in Westchester, where the Covid-19 outbreak began in New York a month ago. Meanwhile, the Bronx had 12,315 cases and Manhattan, 9,300.

Queens and Brooklyn — both geographically on Long Island — had 20,114 and 17,504 cases, respectively. 

Suffolk County had 11,370 cases.

Combined, Nassau and Suffolk now represent 21.7 percent of the state's 113,704 cases — up from 16 percent in recent days.

Cuomo described his concern for Long Island as the growing center of the coronavirus outbreak.

"You see the Long Island number growing," he said, "and it's growing steadily. It's growing more east than north."

He also noted, "We've been saying for the last few days watch Long Island."

Cuomo spoke of the increasing need for ventilators, breathing machines to keep the hardest-hit patients alive — Covid-19 is primarily a respiratory disease afflicting the lungs.

The state had ordered 17,000 ventilators, but had received only a fraction of them by Saturday, the governor said.

Earlier, he had said the state could need as many as 30,000 ventilators at the peak of infection, which as of Friday, he said could come within seven to 21 days.

Cuomo said China is donating 1,000 ventilators to New York. They were expected to arrive via John F. Kennedy Airport on Saturday.

Oregon had also offered to lend New York 140 ventilators.

And New York was expecting a shipment of ventilators from the federal government. Cuomo, however, did not know how many would be shipped. 

Earlier, the governor had also predicted the state would need 110,000 beds at the apex of infection. It has 75,000 now. An estimated 16,000 to 17,000 Covid-19 patients are currently hospitalized in New York.