The number of people infected with the coronavirus in New York state has gone up by about 25, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday — a day after the total stood at 142.

Officials were still working to determine the exact number of new cases, the governor said on CNN.

Cuomo also discussed Port Authority chief Rick Cotton, who has been infected with the potentially deadly bug.

Calling Cotton a “great friend,” Cuomo said Cotton was doing a “phenomenal job” and had spent a lot of time at JFK Airport when flights were arriving “in the ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak.”

“He’s a hands-on guy. We have a hands-on government and he was there himself. And he got exposed, our guess is, during that situation. But it is not emblematic of public transportation or anything else,” Cuomo said.

Asked if people should be staying away from airports, the governor said that Cotton “was at the airport at the very beginning when people were coming back who were infected from countries all around the world.

“We didn’t even know who was infected and who wasn’t infected. In general, the — let’s remember the bottom line here — the vulnerable populations should be taking precaution,” he said.

“We have this mass fear, mass hysteria. It is the vulnerable population, senior citizens, yes, think twice before getting on a plane,” he continued. “People with pre-existing conditions, yes, think twice before going to a large gathering.

“A person with a compromised immune system, yes, think twice before getting on a flight, going to a gathering, public transportation, etc., those people, yes, general population, no.”

The governor said there are two ways to stop the spread of the virus: massive quarantine lockdowns like in China and Italy and massive testing efforts to find out who is infected and then isolate them.

“Our country does not have the same capacity to do the massive testing that the other countries did. China, South Korea, they were testing like 10,000 people per day,” he said.

“We have to say to our federal government, ‘You have to increase the testing capacity dramatically and faster than we are now increasing the testing capacity,” he added.

Cuomo also was asked about whether the Big Apple — where five new cases have brought the total number of infected to 25 — should cancel its St. Patrick’s Day Parade, as Boston has done.

“That’s one of the things we’re looking at. And, look, in New York, we also have a cluster in Westchester County, which is outside of New York City, and that is a very intense cluster,” he said.

“So we’re taking more dramatic actions in that cluster. You calibrate your response to the time and the facts and the circumstances in that place at that time. So parades, etc., we look at that on a daily basis.”

The governor added that the numbers of those infected will continue to rise.

“We’re not testing enough people to know where it is. The more we test, the more positives you’re going to find. People will think, ‘Oh, my gosh, it is going up. No, it was going up anyway. You just have testing now that confirms what has been going on.”

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