See Pandemic's Toll 6 Months After NYC's 1st Coronavirus Case

NEW YORK CITY — Empty streets. Shuttered restaurants and theaters. Mass unemployment. Masks everywhere. Overflowing hospitals. Trailers full of bodies. Roughly 24,000 dead and a new normal emerging.

All that and more came to pass in the six months since the first confirmed COVID-19 case was found in New York City.

It's almost cliché to point out there's a person and story behind every coronavirus statistic — a beloved local bakery owner whose community couldn't be by his bedside as he died; a nurse who celebrated his birthday with his family behind a glass door so they wouldn't get sick; the overwhelmed staff at a Queens hospital where the city's COVID-19 wave first crashed.

But numbers tell a story too — one that shows how quickly the pandemic struck and reshaped New York City.

The First Case

A 39-year-old health care worker who recently traveled to Iran became the first confirmed COVID-19 case in New York City.

It was March 1.

New York City's publicly-available coronavirus data shows the number of positive coronavirus tests grew at an alarming rate. By March 13, the positive tests surpassed 1,000 and within days of that schools, restaurants and more were shut down.

When the state's "PAUSE" stay-at-home order went into effect on March 22, there were 24,000 positive cases, according to the city's data.

More than 200 people had already died.

The First Death

March 11 — that's the first entry on New York City's official coronavirus death tally. It's a single recorded death, marked under the "confirmed" column.

Then two days passed without a single confirmed or even "probable" coronavirus death in the city, according to the data.

The respite didn't last.

Deaths did nothing but climb every day from March 14 — when there were three deaths — until they peaked April 8.

On that, the single-worst day of the pandemic in New York City, 813 people died from the virus, data shows.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who held daily coronavirus briefings as the virus ravaged the city, labeled the time the peak of the state's coronavirus "mountain."

"Doing this once in life is enough," Cuomo said during a later briefing in which he unveiled a scale model of New York's curve sculpted into a literal representation of a mountain. "We don't need to climb another mountain."

The Epicenter

On March 20, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared New York City the nation's "epicenter" of the coronavirus crisis.

It took days after that for the city to publicly release data showing the virus' toll on individual boroughs and neighborhoods.

When officials finally did on April 1, an almost unbelievable twist of irony emerged — the ZIP code covering Corona, Queens had the most positive tests in city with 947.

That's right, Corona was the epicenter of the coronavirus epicenter.

The 11368 ZIP Code covering Corona still has the most positive tests in the city, as well as deaths, according to data.

Here are the top 10 ZIP codes and neighborhoods for positive tests, as of Sept. 3:

1. 11368 — Corona/North Corona — 5,114 cases
2. 10467 — Allerton/Norwood/Pelham Parkway/Williamsbridge —3,855 cases
3. 11373 — Elmhurst — 3,532 cases
4. 11219 — Borough Park — 3,348 cases
5. 10469 — Allerton/Baychester/Pelham Gardens/Williamsbridge — 3,263 cases
6. 10468 — Fordham/Kingsbridge/University Heights — 3,155 cases
7. 11236 — Canarsie — 3,020 cases
8. 10314 — Bloomfield/Freshkills Park — 2,927 cases
9. 10456 — Claremont/Morrisania — 2,877 cases
10. 11372 — Jackson Heights — 2,829 cases

The ZIP codes with the most deaths are slightly different:

1. 11368 — Corona/North Corona — 446 deaths
2. 11691 — Edgemere/Far Rockaway — 374 deaths
3. 10469 — Allerton/Baychester/Pelham Gardens/Williamsbridge — 366 deaths
4. 10467 — Allerton/Norwood/Pelham Parkway/Williamsbridge — 329 deaths
5. 11226 — Flatbush/Prospect Lefferts Gardens — 301 deaths
6. 11235 — Brighton Beach/Manhattan Beach/Sheepshead Bay — 301 deaths
7. 11236 — Canarsie — 300 deaths
8. 11354 — Flushing/Murray Hill — 300 deaths
9. 11373 — Elmhurst — 297 deaths
10. 10456 — Claremont/Morrisania — 293 deaths

The Toll After Six Months

De Blasio's recent Thursday briefing on the city's daily coronavirus numbers shows how much the situation has improved.

The city's positive test rate —which hit as high as 71.25 percent at its peak— now stands at 0.8 percent, de Blasio said.

Its rolling seven-day average of new coronavirus cases was 253, below the 500-case threshold city health officials set as a warning sign, he said.

There were 84 people admitted to the hospital for coronavirus symptoms, also below a 200 red line, he said.

And city officials didn't count a single death on Wednesday, the last day for which data was available when this story was written. That number could be revised, but the city hasn't had a day in which COVID-19 deaths reached above 10 since July.

The city's six-month toll stands at roughly 24,000 deaths, 57,000 hospitalizations and 231,000 total cases.