The governor on Easter morning was at the Pathways Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Niskayuna, returning ventilators that had been loaned.

“Again last night we lost hundreds of New Yorkers to this terrible disease ...,” said Andrew Cuomo. “But also, when things are at their worst, sometimes people are at their best. Sometimes, just when you need it, people can really show you how great they can be.”

Because ventilators were needed downstate, the epicenter of the pandemic, Cuomo had called for upstate hospitals to lend the ones they weren’t using.

“Out of the blue one day, I got a call that said there’s a nursing home in upstate New York that wants to lend 35 ventilators to downstate New York,” said Cuomo. “It was unsolicited, nobody called and asked.”

That nursing home is Pathways. “We talk about that we’re a family, upstate, downstate, we’re all one family. That family is there to support one another and I want to say thank you on their behalf,” Cuomo said, adding he found the gesture personally inspiring.

Later in the day, at a press briefing, Cuomo announced that the change in total number of hospitalizations statewide is down again. The apex has become a plateau, he said, with total hospitalizations at 18,700.

Cuomo also said that 758 people died of COVID-19 yesterday, bringing the state’s death toll to 9,385.

He announced that now a total of 188,694 New Yorkers have tested positive for the disease, with 8,236 more confirmed cases since yesterday.

Cuomo said he was issuing a new executive order for employers to provide essential workers, for free, with cloth or surgical face masks when they are interacting with the public.

“People want to get on with their lives,” Cuomo said. He called New York Pause — which shut down all nonessential businesses, now until at least April 29 — a “blunt device.”

“The caveat is we need to be smart in the way we reopen. What does smart mean? It means a coordinated approach, a regional approach, and a safe approach. Nobody wants to pick between a public health strategy and an economic strategy,” Cuomo said, calling for more testing and federal assistance.

Cuomo referenced a joint statement put out by Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Republican governor who chairs the National Governors Association, and by himself, a Democrat and vice chairman of the association, that says the federal CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act “almost ignores state government”; the association is calling for substantial federal funding for states.

“There is no level above the state government that can make a difference besides the federal government and we did a statement on a bipartisan basis that said the federal government has to fix this in the next bill, and we put $500 billion for funding,” said Cuomo.

He also cited a Kaiser Health analysis that found “Nebraska, Montana, for example, Minnesota are getting approximately $300,000 per COVID-19 case. New York State gets approximately $12,000. How can that be?” asked Cuomo.

There are now 453 confirmed positive cases of coronavirus disease 2019 in Albany County with 638 people under mandatory quarantine and 74 people under precautionary quarantine.

The death toll for Albany County remains at 12.

Forty county residents are hospitalized with the disease, 13 of them in intensive-care units. The hospitalization rate for Albany County stands at 8.8 percent of those who had tested positive.

The county executive took a break on Easter Sunday from his daily briefings and sent out those latest COVID-19 numbers in a press release.