The number of deaths in New York City dropped Saturday, providing a glimmer of hope that the trend is shifting. Though New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said it’s too early to know:

“We’re looking at this seriously now because by the data we could be either very near the apex, or the apex could be a plateau, and we could be on that plateau right now. We won’t know until we see the next few days – does it go up, does it go down – but that is what the statisticians will tell you today.”

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver cautions us to take this new information with a caveat:

The New York coronavirus numbers in Cuomo’s presser are quite good across the board (at least under the circumstances). But I’d be careful: we’ve seen lots of places where the numbers come in lighter on Sat/Sun/Mon and heavier Tues/Wed/Thurs. Wait for Tuesday, in other words.

There are human beings generating all of this data. A whole chain of human beings is required to count a new case, hospitalization, etc. Often the definitions aren’t straightforward, even for deaths. (Are patients tested for COVID-19 posthumously?). All of this takes time.

And there is this from The Washington Post today about why the number of deaths may be greater than statistics show:

Scientists who analyze mortality statistics from influenza and other respiratory illnesses say it is too early to estimate how many fatalities have gone unrecorded. For a disease with common symptoms such as covid-19, they said, deaths with positive results almost certainly represent only a fraction of the total caused by the disease.

Watch more of Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefing above from NBC News.