New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is set to receive an International Emmy award for his once-daily televised briefings on the coronavirus pandemic that killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers this northern spring report says.
The presentation to the Democratic Governor will be held on a live-stream show on Monday according to an announcement from The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, whose members include media and entertainment figures from over 60 countries and 500 companies.
International Academy President & CEO Bruce Paisner said Cuomo was being honoured with the academy’s Founders Award for using his briefings to inform and calm the public. Previous recipients include former vice-president Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey, and director Steven Spielberg.
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‘The governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,’ he said.
‘People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.’
Cuomo used his more than 100 Powerpoint-driven slideshows in which he applied sometimes emotional, sometimes acerbic style to provide daily updates and detail his administration’s efforts to secure the economy and avoid predictions of as many as 100,000 people hospitalised at once.
New York has reported at least 34,187 deaths of people due to COVID-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And at least 6600 residents have died in nursing homes, according to state data, which doesn’t state how many nursing home residents died in hospitals.
The pandemic peaked in early-to-mid April, when more than 18,000 people were hospitalised at once and hospitals and nursing homes reported as many as 800 deaths in one day.
The state also saw a fall in the number of daily infections, hospitalisations and deaths as Cuomo slowly reopened the state’s economy the following summer, when about 1 percent of tests were coming up positive.
Currently, New York is witnessing far fewer deaths and hospitalisations than before but still, the state’s daily average of COVID-19 cases over the past seven days has more than doubled in two weeks as cases surge nationwide.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK