Two more NYC residents diagnosed with coronavirus: Mayor

Two more city residents have come down with the coronavirus, bringing the number of New Yorkers diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease to 13, Mayor de Blasio announced Thursday.

© Barry Williams/for New York Daily News/New York Daily News/TNS New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at a coronavirus press conference at the governor's Manhattan office March 2, 2020 in Manhattan, New York.

The new patients include a woman in her 80s and a man in his 40s, the Mayor said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe."

“Neither patient has a connection to travel nor any of the other local individuals diagnosed with (the coronavirus)," de Blasio tweeted Thursday. “Both are currently hospitalized and in the intensive care unit. City disease detectives are tracing close contacts of both individuals and will ensure they are appropriately isolated and tested immediately.”

Out of the people tested so far, “25 have come back negative so far,” de blasio said.

“So the batting average is good,” he explained, as he criticized the federal government for being slow to respond to the growing crisis.

“The federal government was very late to the dance in getting tests out to localities,” he said. “They’re still late in terms of getting the volume we need. Right now, we can test dozens of people on a single day. We need to get that up to hundreds, maybe even thousands, very quickly. We can’t do that alone; we need the federal government.”

Several of those suspected of contracting the disease are either friends or relatives of a Westchester lawyer who works in Manhattan and was diagnosed on Tuesday, officials said.

“We are taking the same decisive steps in every case to shut transmission down: isolate and test each suspected case, trace close contacts, and isolate and test them as well," de Blasio tweeted. “We are going to see more cases like this as community transmission becomes more common. We want New Yorkers to be prepared and vigilant, not alarmed,”

More than 96,000 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus globally, with 3,300 of the suffers dying from the disease, according to officials.

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