REUTERS/Mike Segar
- Larry Edgeworth, a longtime employee at NBC News, died Thursday after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, the outlet reported.
- Edgeworth worked in the equipment room at NBC News' headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
- His wife, Crystal, told the outlet he suffered from underlying health issues, though it's unclear what they were.
- New York City now has about 4,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and 26 people have died from the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday morning.
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Larry Edgeworth, a longtime employee at NBC News, died Thursday after testing positive for the novel coronavirus, the outlet reported.
Edgeworth worked in the equipment room at NBC News' headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. Previously, he spent 25 years working as an audio technician and was a familiar face to many network correspondents who traveled with him, NBC News reported.
Edgeworth's wife, Crystal, told the outlet he suffered from underlying health issues, though it's unclear what they were.
"Many of you were fortunate enough to work with Larry over the years, so you know that he was the guy you wanted by your side no matter where you were," NBC News Chairman Andy Lack said in an email to staff on Friday morning.
Lack added that Stacy Brady, NBCUniversal's executive vice president of field and production operations, described Edgeworth as a "gentle giant who would give you the shirt off his back."
New York City now has about 4,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and 26 people have died from the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday morning.
"We now constitute 30 percent of the coronavirus cases in the United States of America, 70 percent of the cases in the state of New York," de Blasio said on MSNBC. "We have to take really intense, radical action right away."
The mayor again called for a "shelter in place" order for New York City. It's unclear what such an order would entail, but it would have far more stringent restrictions than the current limitations on public gatherings and nonessential services.
"I think every place that's at the front line of this crisis needs to move to shelter in place to protect ourselves," de Blasio said. "Anything nonessential needs to stop."
The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, a pandemic on March 11.
To date, 246,444 people around the world have been infected and 10,040 have died as a result. In the US, there are 14,250 confirmed cases and 205 deaths. Majority of the infections are concentrated in New York, Washington state, and California.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide "stay a home" order on Thursday night and asked President Donald Trump to deploy a Navy hospital ship off the Los Angeles port to assist with treating patients.
Newsom said that those who work in critical sectors should go to work and that grocery stores, pharmacies, and banks will stay open.
"This is not a permanent state, this a moment in time," Newsom said. "And we will look back at these moments as a critical decision."
Newsom said the order would last for at least eight weeks but said that he could not give a concrete end date.
"We could not give you a deadline that we really could believe in," he said. "This is a dynamic situation."