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New York leaders faced an unanticipated crisis as the new coronavirus overwhelmed the nation’s largest city. Their response was marred by missed warning signs and policies that many health-care workers say put residents at greater risk and led to unnecessary deaths. In the first few days of March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio assured New Yorkers things were under control. On March 2, Mr. de Blasio tweeted that people should go see a movie. Only after the disease had gripped the city’s low-income neighborhoods in early March did Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio mobilize public and private hospitals to create more beds and intensive-care units. (Ramachandran, Kusisto and Honan, 6/11)

The hospitals serving New York City’s neediest and most vulnerable patients face a financial reckoning as a result of the new coronavirus outbreak and uncertain stimulus funding from Washington, officials at the institutions say. New York City’s Health + Hospitals system is running with about 18 days of cash on hand, officials say. The 11-hospital system will go lean on cash in June and July if more federal funding doesn’t begin to flow, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (Grayce West and Palazzolo, 6/11)

Enrollment in New York's Medicaid program could grow by hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries as workers lose their job—and their insurance coverage—because of the economic shock waves generated by COVID-19. A new analysis from the United Hospital Fund found the state is better equipped to handle a spike in workers seeking Medicaid benefits than during the Great Recession of 2007–2009. (Lamantia, 6/10)

The warning was stark. It was late January, and there were just six known cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. A leading infectious disease specialist who previously had battled Ebola and SARS had an alarming message for a group of money managers: It was about to get a lot worse. “In the 20 or 30 years I’ve been involved in emerging infections,” Jeremy Farrar told the managers on the January 31 call, “I’ve never seen anything that has been as fast or as rapidly moving and dynamic as this has been.” (Chung, 6/12)