Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Schools and College Facilities Statewide Will Remain Closed for the Rest of the Academic Year. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-schools-and-college-facilities
Directs Schools and Colleges to Create Re-Opening Plans that Re-Imagine Facilities to Be Approved by the State
State is Partnering with Kate Spade New York Foundation and Crisis Text Line to Provide 24/7 Emotional Support Service for Frontline Workers; Workers Can Text NYFRONTLINE to 741-741
Department of Financial Services to Require New York State-Regulated Health Insurers to Waive Out-of-Pocket Costs for Mental Health Services for Frontline Essential Workers
Announces New Targeted Efforts to Further Reduce Number of New Hospitalizations per Day
Five New Drive-Through Testing Facilities Now Open in Monroe, Erie, Broome, Niagara and Oneida Counties
Confirms 3,942 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 308,314; New Cases in 48 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced all K-12 schools and college facilities statewide will remain closed for the rest of the academic year and will continue to provide distance learning during that time. The schools will also be required to continue meal programs and child care services for essential workers. The state will make a decision about summer school programming by the end of May.
Governor Cuomo is also directing all schools and colleges to create re-opening plans that re-imagine school facilities in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. These plans should consider how schools can monitor the spread of COVID-19; how to reinforce student safety; when and how to resume extracurricular activities; protocols for special student populations; steps to ensure student mental health; alternative academic calendars; among other considerations. All plans will be reviewed and approved by the state.
The Governor also announced the state is partnering with the Kate Spade New York Foundation and Crisis Text Line to provide a 24/7 emotional support service for frontline health care workers. Those workers can text NYFRONTLINE to 741-741 to access these emotional support services.
The Governor also announced that the State Department of Financial Services will require New York State-regulated health insurers to waive cost-sharing, including deductibles, copayments and coinsurance, for in-network mental health services for New York's frontline essential workers during COVID-19. DFS will also issue an emergency regulation to prohibit insurers from imposing cost-sharing for telehealth and in-person mental health services rendered by in-network providers on an outpatient basis to frontline essential workers eligible to be tested at one of the State's drive through or walk in COVID-19 testing sites.
All schools and colleges will continue to provide distance learning, meal delivery and child care services for the remainder of the school year.
Governor Cuomo
The Governor also announced new targeted efforts to further reduce the number of new hospitalizations per day, which has remained steady at approximately 1,000 over the last several day. This new effort will gather additional information and data from hospitals about the individuals who are being hospitalized for COVID-19, including if they are essential workers, where they work, how they commute, where they live and other demographics. This specific information and data from the hospitals will be used to come up with a new strategy more tailored to the reduction of new daily hospitalizations.
The Governor also announced five new drive-through testing facilities have opened and are now accepting patients in Monroe, Erie, Broome, Niagara and Oneida Counties. Residents who would like to be tested at these facilities must make an appointment by calling 888-364-3065 or online at covid19screening.health.ny.gov. Information about the location of these new facilities is located below:
Niagara County: Niagara County Community College, 3111 Saunders Settlement Rd, Sanborn, NY 14132
Erie County: Buffalo Sabres Lot, 125 Perry Street, Buffalo, NY 14204
Broome County: Binghamton University - Event Center (Lot F/F3)
Monroe County: Monroe County Community College, 1000 E Henrietta Road, Rochester, NY 14623, Lot G
"It's critical that we protect our students from this virus, and given the current circumstances we are in we do not think it is possible to put the necessary precautions in place that would allow us to re-open schools this academic year," Governor Cuomo said. "All schools and colleges will continue to provide distance learning, meal delivery and child care services for the remainder of the school year. And in the meantime, we want schools to start developing a plan to re-open with new protocols that incorporate everything that we are now doing in society and everything that we have learned from this pandemic. This has been a hardship on everyone, but our educators across the state have done a phenomenal job stepping up to make the best of this situation."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 3,942 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 308,314 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 308,314 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,204
39
Allegany
35
0
Broome
299
15
Cattaraugus
49
2
Cayuga
51
3
Chautauqua
35
2
Chemung
123
1
Chenango
99
1
Clinton
61
2
Columbia
202
32
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
61
0
Dutchess
3,002
48
Erie
3,481
162
Essex
28
0
Franklin
15
0
Fulton
75
4
Genesee
154
1
Greene
139
8
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
60
2
Jefferson
61
0
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
73
4
Madison
139
8
Monroe
1,478
37
Montgomery
54
1
Nassau
36,161
307
Niagara
440
20
NYC
169,690
2,212
Oneida
451
12
Onondaga
860
28
Ontario
91
1
Orange
8,751
101
Orleans
92
3
Oswego
64
1
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
990
20
Rensselaer
298
11
Rockland
11,812
104
Saratoga
358
4
Schenectady
514
13
Schoharie
43
1
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
41
2
St. Lawrence
176
3
Steuben
216
0
Suffolk
34,037
373
Sullivan
880
42
Tioga
90
2
Tompkins
128
0
Ulster
1,298
19
Warren
182
6
Washington
170
22
Wayne
71
0
Westchester
29,232
262
Wyoming
68
1
Yates
18
0
May 1, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Schools and College Facilities Statewide Will Remain Closed for the Rest of the Academic Year. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-16
Directs Schools and Colleges to Create Re-Opening Plans that Re-Imagine Facilities to Be Approved by the State
State is Partnering with Kate Spade New York Foundation and Crisis Text Line to Provide 24/7 Emotional Support Service for Frontline Workers; Workers Can Text NYFRONTLINE to 741-741
Department of Financial Services to Require New York State-Regulated Health Insurers to Waive Out-of-Pocket Costs for Mental Health Services for Frontline Essential Workers
Announces New Targeted Efforts to Further Reduce Number of New Hospitalizations per Day
Five New Drive-Through Testing Facilities Now Open in Monroe, Erie, Broome, Niagara and Oneida Counties
Confirms 3,942 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 308,314; New Cases in 48 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "Nobody can predict what the situation is going to be three weeks or four weeks from now, so we are trying to stage decisions at intervals that give us information, but also enough time for people to make preparations they need to make."
"We are going to be asking businesses to come up with plans that safeguard workers when they reopen. We need schools to come up with plans also that bring those precautions into the schoolroom. That is also for colleges, and the state will approve those plans."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced all K-12 schools and college facilities statewide will remain closed for the rest of the academic year and will continue to provide distance learning during that time. The schools will also be required to continue meal programs and child care services for essential workers. The state will make a decision about summer school programming by the end of May.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. Pleasure to be with you. Everybody knows Dr. Malatras, Dr. Zucker, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor; Robert Muijca Budget Director, also a member of the MTA Board. Today is day 62, feels like just yesterday. Before we look at the numbers, I just want people to recall the context for these numbers and remember what we have accomplished. We were faced with a situation where the infection rate numbers were going straight up. That was only 30 days ago that we saw the number of cases and the number of cases going into the hospitals, the infection rate everything was going straight up.
That number would have just continued to go straight up and that's why all the projections, national projections, state projections, local projections turned out to be incorrect because they were all believing that that line was going to continue to keep going up. What happened is, New Yorkers, Americans, changed reality. Literally changed reality. They literally changed the path of the virus spread and reversed the spread. That's what the close down procedures did, that's what the masks have done, that's what the social distancing has done. New Yorkers and all across this country, you saw that number change from that up trajectory to the downward trajectory.
That shift in the trajectory reduced, by about 100,000, the number of New Yorkers who would have been hospitalized. One hundred thousand hospitalized. To be hospitalized you have to be seriously ill. A portion of those 100,000 would have passed away. So all this inconvenience, this turmoil, for what? To keep 100,000 people out of hospitals. That's for what. The 100,000 in the hospitals would have overwhelmed the hospital system, would have been chaotic. That's where Italy was and a number of those 100,000 would have died. So remember that context. Not just for the retrospective, but for the perspective.
Our past actions changed the path's trajectory. Our present actions will determine the future trajectory. It is that clear. It is cause and effect. You tell me what we do today, I will tell you the number of people sick tomorrow. So, everyday we get up, everyday everyone says, "Oh my gosh, I have to do this again." Yes, but what you do today is going to determine the number of sick tomorrow. New Yorkers have continued to do what they have to do. You see that number of hospitalizations dropping. That is all good news and that is a credit to the community and the social conscience and the responsibility of New Yorkers.
The question now is, as we're on the decline, how fast is the decline and how far is the decline? How low will the number actually wind up? Right now, we're at about 1,000 new cases per day, in the 900s: 954, 933, 970, 973. That's four days. The day before that it was 1,076. That looks like the number is flattening, is plateauing at about 900, 1000 cases. Three, four days, five days if you want to say between 900 and 1,100. That is still too high a number of new cases to have everyday. Not where we were, a lot better than where we were for sure, but 1,000 new cases every day is still a very high infection rate. It's still a burden on the hospital system.
We now want to take it to the next level. Let's drill down on those 1,000 new cases. Where are they coming from? Why is the infection rate continuing? Who's getting infected? Let's get more targeted in our response. We're fighting this statewide, but you have to wage the battle, wage the war on many fronts. It's a statewide battle. Now that we have it basically stabilized and on the decline, the enemy is on the run. The virus is reducing, let's get more refined, more targeted. I'm going to be speaking with the hospitals this afternoon and say that we want to get more specific information on those new cases that are coming in the door.
Where are they coming from? Who are they? To see if we can come up with a more specific target. If you look at the past few days where the cases have been coming from, this is a 3-day what they call rolling average, you see 17 percent from Manhattan. Much of it correlates to population but much of it also correlates with downstate New York. Seventeen percent Manhattan, 17 percent Kings, 12 percent Bronx, 11 percent Queens, but then 10 percent Nassau. Seven percent Westchester and Suffolk. So it's the downstate region and then upstate it's Erie County to give you snapshot of where the cases are coming from.
We need more specific information to have a specific battle plan. Literally where do the new cases come from? Are they essential workers? Are they people who are staying home and getting infected by a family member? Or are they essential workers who are still traveling and possibly getting infected at work? Where do they work? How do they commute? Is this a question of getting infected on public transportation? We just announced new subway, buses, Long Island Railroad, Metro North protocols. Where in the state are these people being transferred from a nursing home? What is their sex? What is their age? What is their previous health status? What are the demographics? Let's get more specific information from the hospitals to see if we can come up with the strategy more tailored to the reduction of these 1,000 cases per day. The number of deaths, 289, lower than it has been, but still tragic and terrible, and all the good numbers, the good news for me, every day this number just wipes that all away.
We have announced a statewide policy for our schools. We did it last March 18th. We said we were going to close schools all across the state, k-12 and higher education schools. We waived what was called the 180-day requirement, which is a state regulation that schools have to have 180 days of teaching. Schools then transferred to distance learning programs, meal delivery services, child care options for essential workers. That has actually worked out well, not perfectly, we had to do it in a rush, but there are lessons we can learn here that could change teaching going forward and teaching in these types of situations going forward - but it did work. Basically, it functioned well, and teachers did a phenomenal job stepping up to do this. It was a hardship on everyone, but we made the best of the situation. Colleges and universities were also moved to distance learning. Campuses were closed, unless a student really needed housing on the campus. Schools, obviously by definition, have higher density. They have transportation issues, kids getting on buses. We did not have the protection measures to put in place. You have 700 public school districts, 4,800 schools in this state, and then you have 1,800 private schools, 89 SUNY and CUNY campuses, and 100 private campuses for a total of 4.2 million students.
So, the decisions on the education system are obviously critically important. We must protect our children. Every parent, every citizen feels that. We must protect our students and educators. Given the circumstances we are in and the precautions that would have to be put in place to come up with a plan to reopen schools with all those new protocols: How do you operate a school that socially distances with masks, without gatherings, with a public transportation system that has a lower number of students on it? How would you get that plan up and running? We do not think it is possible to do that in a way that would keep our children, students, and educators safe. So, we are going to have the schools remain closed for the rest of the year. We are going to continue the distance learning programs. Schools have asked about summer school and whether we will have attendance in schools for summer schools. That decision will be made by the end of the month. Again, nobody can predict what the situation is going to be three weeks or four weeks from now, so we are trying to stage decisions at intervals that give us information, but also enough time for people to make preparations they need to make. So, any decisions on summer school will be made by the end of the month. In the meantime, meal programs will continue, the child care services for essential workers will continue. And then we want schools to start developing our plan to reopen, and the plan has to have protocols in place that incorporate everything that we are now doing in society and everything that we learned. We are going to be asking businesses to come up with plans that safeguard workers when they reopen. We need schools to come up with plans also that bring those precautions into the schoolroom. That is also for colleges and the state will approve those plans.
Related issue that we need to discuss and pay attention to, this COVID crisis has caused significant disruption and many unintended consequences, and ancillary issues that have developed, and one of them is when you have people who are put in this situation immediately with no notice, it has caused serious mental health issues. You have anxiety, depression, insomnia, loneliness, that feeling of isolation. We're seeing the use of drugs go up. We're seeing the use of alcohol consumption go up. This is a chronic problem. If you are feeling these issues, you are not alone. As a matter of fact, half of all Americans have said that their mental health has been negatively impacted. Don't underestimate the stress of the situation, and it happens on a lot of levels. Three out of four say that their sleep has been affected. You do not know where your next paycheck is coming from. You do not know if your job is going to exist. You are at work one day, the next day they say everything is closed, stay in the house. You are in that house, in a confined situation, or you're in an apartment and in a confined situation. You can't get out. It is difficult for emotional support, we have a hotline set up. People shouldn't be shy in any way or have any second thoughts about calling for help. It is a pervasive problem, and people should make a call and get the help if they need the help.
We also see, in line with what we're talking about, a dramatic increase in the incidence of domestic violence. There was a 15 percent increase in March. A 30 percent increase in April. That is - March is when this started, 15 percent. April, 30 percent. That is a frightening rate and level of increase. Again, New Yorkers in need, we have a domestic violence helpline - 844-997-2121. You can call, just discuss the issue. You don't have to give your identity, or say where you live, but people who need help should reach out. There is no shame in reaching out and saying, "I need help." This is a national epidemic. It is a statewide epidemic. Ask for help, and we are here to help.
We are especially concerned about these issues for frontline workers. I mean, just think about what the frontline workers are going through. Think about what the healthcare workers are going through. They're working extended hours. They're seeing a large number of people die. They're working in very frightening situations. They're worried about their own health. They're worried they get infected, they then have to go home, worry if they're infected and bringing that infection home. So, this is a terribly, stressful, difficult time, especially for the frontline workers, and we want them to know that we not only appreciate what they are doing, but we are there to support them, right? Saying thank you is nice. Acting in gratitude is even nicer. We have a special emotional support hotline for our essential workers. And we are also going to direct all insurers to waive any cost-sharing, co-pay deductibles for mental health services for essential workers, which means the mental health services will be free for frontline workers. And they will be at no cost. And too many families and people have said to me, "You know, I would go for services, but I do not want to pay the cost. I can't afford it. I don't want to take that money from my family." That's gone. There is no cost to get mental health services, so just wipe that reason away, and get the help that you need. It's even in the best interest of your family.
Last point, personal opinion, who said when life knocks you on your rear, learn, grow up, and get back up. Was it A.J. Parkinson? It was not A.J. Parkinson, it was me. Nobody ever said that, just me. "When life knocks you on your rear learn, grow, and get back up." This has been a very difficult, difficult situation for everyone, but when life knocks you on your rear, learn and grow, and we will collectively learn and grow. We are going to learn many difficult lessons from this situation. We are going to learn about public health threats that we never saw before, we never heard of, we never really anticipated, we never actualized. Everyone talked about global pandemics in that possibility, but you know what, until it happens people do not really get it. Our hospital system, and how that works, and how it works in an emergency. How tele-education works, how tele-medicine works. How you keep society functioning during an emergency. How you communicate to people the dangers of a situation without panicking people, because you still need essential workers to come out and do their job. You do not want to panic people where they say, "I'm not leaving the house." But you need to communicate the facts, so people act responsibly. How do you do that in a short period of time? What do you do about public transportation? Learned a whole lesson with the downstate public transportation system.
There will be a lot to learn from this, which we will learn, and we will be the better for. I believe that. That's part of life. In the meantime, we have to go day to day, and we try to make the best of a bad situation. You try to find that silver lining through the dark clouds. All of us try to do it in our own way. Everybody is struggling with it in their own way and that's all across the board. In many ways, this is the great equalizer. Doesn't matter who you are, where you are, this impacts your life, dramatically. But, personally, if you work at it, maybe you can find a little silver lining.
I am sitting there last night with my daughter Michaela, she's my baby, the baby's now 22. She says to me, "You know, dad, think about it, I've spent more time with you now then I will probably spend with you in the rest of my adult life." I said, "Wow, what does that mean?" She said, "Well, think about it. I have been with you for over a month. I won't be with you for another month for the rest of my adult life." Which is kind of jarring because I still think of her as my baby, but you know what? That is probably right, you know. She is 22. She is going to go off and do whatever she does, and then you see her at holidays for a few hours here. Maybe you steal a Saturday once in a while. It reminded me of the Harry Chapin song "The Cat's in The Cradle" which was a great old song, from a great man, great New Yorker too. But these are, with all the bizarreness, I have not been able to see my mother in two months, but I have my daughter probably for a longer period of time then I'll probably have for the rest of her adult life. That's probably true.
So, you try to find the silver lining. You try to stay positive. We stay socially distanced, but we stay spiritually connected. New Yorkers have been so supportive of each other. You can feel it. There is a spirit of community and mutuality. People are there to help one another. People understand that everybody is going through this, everybody is in stress. You look at the way people have complied with these rules, as annoying as they are, masks, six feet this. That is out of respect one for the other. I love the metaphor of the mask. The mask does not protect me. I wear the mask to protect you. What a beautiful sign of caring, of mutuality. I wear a mask to protect you. That's the spirit, even in this terrible time of difficulty. So, yes, you can be socially distanced, but you can be spiritually connected and closer in ways you've never been before. I believe that's where we are. Because we are New York tough, which means tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving.
May 1, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Issues Executive Order Delaying School Board Elections and Budget Votes Until June 9th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-issues-executive-order-delaying-school-board
All School Board Elections and Budget Votes Will Be Conducted by Mail
Local Special District and Village Elections Will Be Delayed Until September 15, 2020
In an effort to keep New Yorkers safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today issued an executive order delaying school board elections and budget votes statewide until June 9, 2020. The school board elections and budget votes will all be conducted by mail and all qualified voters will be sent an absentee ballot with return postage paid. The Executive Order also delays local special district and village elections until September 15, 2020.
"We've made great progress to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but we still don't know when this pandemic will end and we don't want to undo all the work we've already done to flatten the curve," Governor Cuomo said. "We don't want to put New Yorkers in a situation where they are possibly putting their health at risk, so we are delaying school board elections and conducting them by mail and delaying all local special district and village elections to help limit any unnecessary exposure to this virus among both voters and poll workers."
May 2, 2020.
Video & Photos: Governor Cuomo Inspects MTA Subway Disinfectant Process as Fight Against COVID-19 Continues. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-photos-governor-cuomo-inspects-mta-subway-disinfectant-process-fight-against-covid-19
Governor Tours New York City Transit Corona Maintenance Facility and Thanks Frontline Workers
Governor Cuomo: “We cannot ask our frontline workers, who risk their lives every day to keep New Yorkers safe and fed, to ride a public transit system that puts their health at further risk. This historic undertaking to disinfect every subway car in the New York City subway system daily –without disrupting service–will ensure that our frontline workers have a clean and reliable way to get to work. We will continue to do everything possible to protect the heroes of this crisis.”
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo inspected the MTA disinfectant process as the MTA begins disinfecting subway cars daily and toured the New York City Transit Corona Maintenance Facility. The Governor thanked the frontline workers undertaking this historic effort.
VIDEO of the Governor's tour is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Results of Completed Antibody Testing Study of 15,000 People Showing 12.3 Percent of Population Has COVID-19 Antibodies. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-results-completed-antibody-testing
State Will Distribute Over 7 Million More Cloth Masks to Vulnerable New Yorkers and Frontline Workers Across the State
State is Distributing $25 Million to Food Banks Across the State Through the Nourish New York Initiative
Confirms 4,663 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 312,977; New Cases in 44 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the results of the state's completed antibody testing study, showing 12.3 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies. The survey developed a baseline infection rate by testing 15,000 people at grocery stores and community centers across the state over the past two weeks. Of those tested, 11.5% of women tested positive and 13.1% of men tested positive. A regional breakdown of the results is below:
The Governor also announced that the state will distribute over seven million more cloth masks to vulnerable New Yorkers and essential workers across the state. The masks will be distributed as follows:
500,000 for NYCHA residents
500,000 for farm workers
1 million for vulnerable populations, including the mental health and developmental disabled communities
500,000 for homeless shelters
2 million for elderly New Yorkers and nursing homes
1 million for faith-based organizations and food banks
2 million for grocery stores, supermarkets and food delivery workers
While we're in uncharted waters it doesn't mean we proceed blindly, and the results of the 15,000 people tested in our antibody survey program - the largest survey in the nation - will inform our strategy moving forward
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
The Governor also announced the state is distributing $25 million to food banks across the state through the Nourish New York Initiative. The Nourish New York initiative, announced earlier this week by Governor Cuomo, is working to quickly reroute New York's surplus agricultural products to the populations who need them most through New York's network of food banks. Funding will be distributed as follows:
New York City Region: $11 million
Westchester Region: $1 million
Long Island Region: $1.6 million
Capital/Hudson Valley Region (includes portion of North Country and Mohawk Valley): $4.4 million
Central NY Region (includes portion of North Country and Mohawk Valley): $2.2 million
Southern Tier Region: $1.1 million
Western New York Region: $2.1 million
Finger Lakes Region (includes portion of Southern Tier): $1.7 million
"While we're in uncharted waters it doesn't mean we proceed blindly, and the results of the 15,000 people tested in our antibody survey program - the largest survey in the nation - will inform our strategy moving forward," Governor Cuomo said. "We're also going to undertake a full survey of antibody testing for transit workers, who have been on the front lines of this crisis. We've said thank you to our essential workers thousands of times but actions speak louder than words, and we want them to know that we're doing everything we can do to keep them safe."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 4,663 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 312,977 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 312,977 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,238
34
Allegany
35
0
Broome
305
6
Cattaraugus
50
1
Cayuga
51
0
Chautauqua
35
0
Chemung
124
1
Chenango
99
0
Clinton
62
1
Columbia
205
3
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
61
0
Dutchess
3,049
47
Erie
3,598
117
Essex
28
0
Franklin
15
0
Fulton
79
4
Genesee
155
1
Greene
142
3
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
61
1
Jefferson
62
1
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
76
3
Madison
149
10
Monroe
1,534
56
Montgomery
54
0
Nassau
36,519
358
Niagara
457
17
NYC
172,354
2,664
Oneida
474
23
Onondaga
903
43
Ontario
92
1
Orange
8,910
159
Orleans
93
1
Oswego
66
2
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1003
13
Rensselaer
311
13
Rockland
11,945
133
Saratoga
361
3
Schenectady
521
7
Schoharie
43
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
42
1
St. Lawrence
176
0
Steuben
217
1
Suffolk
34,478
441
Sullivan
931
51
Tioga
90
0
Tompkins
128
0
Ulster
1,327
29
Warren
185
3
Washington
184
14
Wayne
73
2
Westchester
29,626
394
Wyoming
69
1
Yates
18
0
May 2, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Results of Completed Antibody Testing Study of 15,000 People Show 12.3 Percent of Population has COVID-19 Antibodies. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-17
Governor Cuomo: "Uncharted waters doesn't mean proceed blindly, right? It means get information, get data, the best you can, and use that data to decide where you're going. So, especially in this situation, you have so much emotion, you have politics, you have personal anxiety that people feel, social anxiety, social stress. Let's stick to the facts, let's stick to the data, let's make sure we're making the best decisions with the best information that we have."
Cuomo: "We want people to know who need to use the subways and buses, because they are working, that they're safe. And the essential workers who have kept this entire society functioning have done an extraordinary job, and we want them to know that we're doing everything we can do to keep them safe."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the results of the state's completed antibody testing study, showing 12.3 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies. The survey developed a baseline infection rate by testing 15,000 people at grocery stores and community centers across the state over the past two weeks. Of those tested, 11.5% of women tested positive and 13.1% of men tested positive. A regional breakdown of the results is below:
Region
Percent Positive
Capital District
2.2%
Central NY
1.9%
Finger Lakes
2.6%
Hudson Valley (Without Westchester/Rockland)
3%
Long Island
11.4%
Mohawk Valley
2.7%
North Country
1.2%
NYC
19.9%
Southern Tier
2.4%
Westchester/Rockland
13.8%
Western NY
6%
The Governor also announced that the state will distribute over seven million more cloth masks to vulnerable New Yorkers and essential workers across the state. The masks will be distributed as follows:
500,000 for NYCHA residents
500,000 for farm workers
1 million for vulnerable populations, including the mental health and developmental disabled communities
500,000 for homeless shelters
2 million for elderly New Yorkers and nursing homes
1 million for faith-based organizations and food banks
2 million for grocery stores, supermarkets and food delivery workers
The Governor also announced the state is distributing $25 million to food banks across the state through the Nourish New York Initiative. The Nourish New York initiative, announced earlier this week by Governor Cuomo, is working to quickly reroute New York's surplus agricultural products to the populations who need them most through New York's network of food banks. Funding will be distributed as follows:
New York City Region: $11 million
Westchester Region: $1 million
Long Island Region: $1.6 million
Capital/Hudson Valley Region (includes portion of North Country and Mohawk Valley): $4.4 million
Central NY Region (includes portion of North Country and Mohawk Valley): $2.2 million
Southern Tier Region: $1.1 million
Western New York Region: $2.1 million
Finger Lakes Region (includes portion of Southern Tier): $1.7 million
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. Pleasure to be with everyone this morning. We are in Corona, Queens. Always a pleasure to get out of the state capitol, tell you the truth, and talk to the people who are actually doing the work. I am a Queens boy, so it's coming back home for me. Corona, Queens, was called Corona, Queens before the coronavirus. There's no connection between Corona, Queens and the coronavirus.
Let me introduce my colleagues who are here. from my far left, Pat Foye, who is the chairman of the MTA. To my immediate left, Sarah Feinberg, who runs the New York City transit bureau. To my right, Gareth Rhodes, deputy superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, but has been with me for many years and is now helping on this up in Albany.
Today is Saturday. I know that because it's on the slide, otherwise I may not have known that. I follow the days by what's on the PowerPoint. Everybody talks about this is uncharted waters, that we've never been here before, and that's true. But even when you are in uncharted waters, that doesn't mean you proceed blindly, right. You get whatever information that you can because you want to stay informed. Even in the old days, when sailors would sail into uncharted waters, this is before GPS and radar and depth finders, they would throw out a piece of lead with a rope. The lead would fall to the bottom and they would call back to the captain how deep the water was. The lead even had, on the very bottom, a piece of wax that would pick up what was on the ocean bottom, whatever sand, rocks, et cetera, so the captain could tell basically where he was.
So uncharted waters doesn't mean proceed blindly, right? It means get information, get data, the best you can, and use that data to decide where you're going. So, especially in this situation, you have so much emotion, you have politics, you have personal anxiety that people feel, social anxiety, social stress. Let's stick to the facts, let's stick to the data, let's make sure we're making the best decisions with the best information that we have. So, we do a lot of testing, a lot of tracking to find out where we are.
We test number of hospitalizations. Every night we find out how many people are in the hospital the day before, and we've been tracking that. Good news is that number is down a tick again today. The net change in hospitalizations is down tick. Intubations is down, which is very good news. The new cases walking in the door, the new COVID cases, the number of new infections, was also down a little bit, 831. It had been relatively flat at about 900 every day, which is not great news. Yesterday was 831. We'll watch to see what happens with that. The number that I watch every day, which is the worst, is the number of deaths. That number has remained obnoxiously and terrifyingly high, and it's still not dropping at the rate we would like to see it drop. It even went up a little bit, 299, 289 the day before. That is bad news. Two hundred and seventy-six deaths in hospitals, 23 in nursing homes. As everybody knows, nursing homes are where the most vulnerable population and the highest number of the most vulnerable population.
Again, use the data, use information to determine actions. Not emotions, not politics, not what people think or feel, but what we know in terms of facts. We've been sampling all across the state to determine the infection rate so we know if it's getting or if it's getting worse. We've done the largest survey in the nation testing for people who have antibodies. If somebody has antibodies, it means that that person was infected. That's what the antibody test does for you. It tells you that that person was infected. They've now recovered so that they have antibodies. I went through this with my brother Chris. He got infected, he now has the antibodies. So if you test him, he tests positive for antibodies.
We've been doing these antibody testings all across the state. We have the largest sample now, over 15,000 people which is an incredibly large sample. When we started on the 22nd, we have 2,900 people surveyed at that time. We had about a 13.9 percent, just about 14 percent, infection rate statewide. It then went up to about 14.9 and today it is down to 12.3. Now, statisticians will say this is all plus or minus in the margin of error, but it's a large sample, it is indicative, 14.9 down to 12.3. As you can see, we test about every 4 or 5 days. We have so much at stake, so many decisions that we have to make that we want to get those data points as quickly as we can.
Seeing it go down to 12 percent, may only be a couple of points, but it's better than seeing it go up, that's for sure. Again, this is outside the margin of error so this is a good sign. It is 15,000 people surveyed so it's a large number. You can then start to look at where in the state, who in the state, so that will inform our strategy. You can see it's a little bit more male than female, not exactly sure why that is. In New York City, you see the number went from 21 to 24 and it's down to 19.9. Again, that's a good sign. You always want to see the number dropping rather than the number increasing. Within New York City you see the Bronx is high, 27 percent, Brooklyn 19, Manhattan 17, Queens 18, Staten Island 19. We're going to do more research to understand what's going on there. Why is the Bronx higher than the other boroughs?
Statewide, you see it's basically flat. This is predominantly an issue for New York City, then Long Island, then the northern suburbs, then the rest of the state. But Erie County, which is Buffalo, New York has been problematic. The racial breakdown we're looking at to study disproportionate impact, who is paying the highest price for this virus what's happening with poorer communities, what's happening with the racial demographics, overlaid over the income demographics, and also if there's any information that could be instructive.
We're still getting about 900 new infections every day walking into the hospital. That is still an unacceptably high rate. We're trying to understand exactly why that is, who are those 900? Where is it coming from? What can we do to now refine our strategies to find out where those new cases are being generated, and then get to those areas, get to those place, get to those people to try to target our attack.
If you remember we had the first cluster in the nation. The first hot spot even before they called them hot spots was New Rochelle, Westchester. There was a tremendous outbreak in New Rochelle. We then sent all sorts of resources into New Rochelle and we actually reduced that hot spot.
So if you find a specific place or pattern that is generating infections then you can attack it but you have to find it first, and that's what we're looking at, especially on this number of new infections that are coming. You see if you look at the location of it, it's not telling us much but we asked the hospitals yesterday we had all the hospitals on a conference call and I spoke to all the hospitals and asked them to take additional information from people who are walking into the hospitals to try to find out where these infections are coming from. Are they frontline workers or are they people who are staying home? Are these infections that are spread in the home or are they frontline workers which means they're getting up every day and getting on public transit to go into work and maybe they're getting it on public transit, maybe they're getting it at the work place? But getting more information on where these cases are coming from - where do you live, not just borough but what community within the borough. Are there different health factors that are affecting the new infection rate, comorbidities, how are they traveling, are they in their cars, are they on public transportation, is it the New York City transit system, Long Island Railroad, et cetera, so we asked the hospitals to collect that data yesterday. We'll be getting that over the next couple of days and that will help us again get more information.
In the meantime, we know that vulnerable populations are paying the highest price as seniors, as nursing homes, and our poorer communities. They are the ones where you have higher infection rates and you have higher risk and higher exposure.
We're going to distribute today 7 million masks to just those communities in nursing homes, poorer communities, people in public housing in New York City, New York City Housing Authority, so we'll be doing that today. Seven million masks is a large number. There is about 9 million people in New York City total 7 million masks will make a big difference.
We're also funding food banks. The more this has gone on, the longer people are without a job, the longer people are without a check, basics like paying rent and buying food become very important. We have addressed the rent issue, the immediate urgent need. Nobody can be evicted for nonpayment of rent and that's true through June. So, people are stable in their housing environment.
The next basic need is food right and we're operating food banks. We just funded $25 million more in food banks. All the food banks will tell you that the demand is way, way up and we need help in funding the food banks. There are lot of philanthropy, a lot of foundations that are in the business of helping people. Well if you're foundation or not-for-profit, or philanthropy, or a person who wants to help, we could use more funding for food banks. The state budget is also very stressed with what's going on. So, we don't have the state funds to do what's need. But we would appreciate donations for the food banks.
As I said the antibody testing has been very important and we're going to undertake a full survey of antibody testing for transit workers. Transit workers have very much been at the front line. We talk about essential workers. People who are out there every day running the buses, running the subways all through this. We know that there's been a very high infection rate among transit workers. We've said thank you and we appreciate what you're doing 1,000 times but, I believe actions speak louder than words. If you appreciate what we're doing then help us do what we do and we're going to be doing that with more testing and more resources. That's going to be going on right now.
And to keep our transit workers safe and to keep the public safe, the riding public, we're going to do something that has never been done before. And that is that the MTA is going to be disinfecting every train 24 hours. This is such a monumental undertaking I can't even begin to describe it to you. The New York City subway system has never been closed. It operates 24 hours a day because we have a 24-hour city. We're taking the unprecedented step during this pandemic of closing the system for four hours at night from 1:00 a.m. to 5 a.m. when the ridership is lowest. The ridership is lower to begin with. It's down about 90 percent because of everything, but its lowest during 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. We're going to close it from 1:00 a.m. to 5 a.m., the MTA is going to literally disinfect every train and I just view the operations on how they're doing it, it's smart, it's labor intensive. People have to wear hazmat suits. They have a number of chemicals that disinfect, but literally you have to go through the whole train with a misting device where they spray disinfectant literally on every surface. You know this virus, they're just studying it now, but there are reports that say the virus can live two or three days on some surfaces like stainless steel. You look at the inside of a subway car, you look at the rails, you look at the bars, they're all stainless steel. So, to make sure the transit workers are safe, to make sure the riding public is safe, the best thing you can do is disinfect the whole inside of the car, as massive a challenge as that is. But that's what the MTA is doing and they're doing it extraordinarily well.
It's just another sign of the dedication, the skill, the capacity of our transit workers, which is indicative of the story of New York. They're stepping up in a big, big way. And not just the cars, they're doing stations, all the handrails, et cetera. And it's good and smart for the transit workers who have to work in that environment, but it's also right for the riding public. We want people to know who need to use the subways and buses, because they are working, that they're safe. And the essential workers who have kept this entire society functioning have done an extraordinary job, and we want them to know that we're doing everything we can do to keep them safe.
You know, this was a delicate balance all along. We needed New Yorkers to understand how dangerous this virus was, and we communicated that early on, so that when we want stay home, people understood they should really stay home, right? New Yorkers can be a cynical bunch, and just because a governor says stay home, they're not going to stay home unless they understand why they need to stay home. So, we presented those facts, but at the same time we're saying to essential workers, after hearing just how dangerous the virus is, and by the way, you have to go for work tomorrow. And they did. And if the essential workers didn't, then you would have seen a real problem. If you don't have food on the shelves, if you don't have power to homes, if you don't have basic services, if the police don't show up, if the fire department doesn't show up, if the EMTs don't show up, if the ambulances don't run, if the nurses don't show up, if the doctors don't show up, then you are at a place where you've never been before.
So, after communicating how dangerous this situation was, the next breath was, but frontline workers, you have to show up. And then did. And they did. And they did their job. That's an extraordinary example of duty and honor and respect and love for what they do and who they are and love for their brothers and sisters in the community. And they demonstrated it. They didn't say it. They demonstrated it, every day when they get up and they leave their house. So, God bless them all, but we also have to do what we have to do to make sure we're doing everything we can to keep them safe, and this heroic effort on cleaning the subways is part of that. And we will continue it, because we are New York tough, but tough doesn't mean just tough, it means smart, it means united, it means disciplined and it means loving. You can be tough and you can be loving. They're not inconsistent. Sometimes you have to be tough to be loving. And that's what New York is all about.
May 3, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo, Governor Murphy, Governor Lamont, Governor Wolf, Governor Carney, Governor Raimondo & Governor Baker Announce Joint Multi-State Agreement to Develop Regional Supply Chain for PPE and Medical Equipment. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-governor-murphy-governor-lamont-governor-wolf
States Will Aggregate Demand for PPE, Medical Equipment and Testing on a Regional Basis
Regional Supply Chains Will Help Realize Better Pricing, Delivery and Reliability of PPE and Medical Equipment for States
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, Delaware Governor John Carney, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker today announced a joint multi-state agreement to develop a regional supply chain for personal protective equipment, other medical equipment and testing.
While the states will continue to partner with the federal government during this global and national public health crisis, they will also work together to identify the entire region's needs for these products, aggregate demand among the states, reduce costs and stabilize the supply chain. The states will also coordinate policies regarding the inventory of PPE each state's health care infrastructure should have to be prepared for a possible second wave of COVID-19. The states will also coordinate policies on what supplies local governments should have on hand for their First Responders, and if any requirements regarding PPE for the non-for-profit and private sector are needed.
The states will then seek to identify suppliers within the country, region or state who can scale to meet the demand of the entire region over the next three months. The goal of this approach is to decrease the potential for disruptions in the supply chain for PPE and medical equipment, including sanitizer and ventilators, and testing, and promote regional economic development.
In addition, the states are discussing how to collectively explore emerging technologies on an ongoing basis to take advantage of the potential associated with alternative methods of production for existing products and innovation that would lead to more effective and/or less expensive alternatives. For example, 3D Printers may represent an attractive alternative to manufacturing certain personal protective equipment and medical products.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a mad scramble for medical equipment across the entire nation - there was competition among states, private entities and the federal government and we were driving up the prices of these critical resources
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
"The COVID-19 pandemic created a mad scramble for medical equipment across the entire nation - there was competition among states, private entities and the federal government and we were driving up the prices of these critical resources," Governor Cuomo said. "As a state and as a nation we can't go through that again. We're going to form a regional state purchasing consortium with our seven northeast partner states to increase our market power when we're buying supplies and help us actually get the equipment at a better price. I want to thank our neighboring states for their ongoing support, generosity and regional coordination on these important efforts."
Governor Murphy said, "Our states should never be in a position where we are actively competing against each other for life-saving resources. By working together across the region, we can obtain critical supplies as we begin the process to restart our economies, while also saving money for our taxpayers. This concept is at the heart of the regional approach we've established."
Governor Lamont said, "With global supply chains continuing to experience a major disruption due to the pandemic, combining the efforts of our states into a regional purchasing initiative will help our states obtain needed PPE and other medical equipment without competing against each other. I've long been advocating for the federal government to get involved because pitting all 50 states against each other to compete for these supplies has never made any sense. Partnering with our neighbors helps make our purchasing power stronger and more dependable."
Governor Wolf said, "By working together we can combine our strengths to build the capacities we all need. We can exploit our market size to encourage producers to make what we need, we can exploit our financial strength to give that encouragement added weight, and we can exploit the great research institutions and the brainpower in our region to increase our chances of success. I look forward to working with my fellow governors—and my neighbors-to build a strong regional supply chain."
Governor Carney said, "We need a consistent approach for moving our states out of this crisis, and that includes ensuring a sufficient supply of PPE and tests. I'm thankful for this coordination with my fellow Governors in the region. We'll be better positioned to continue tackling this crisis working together with the states around us."
Governor Raimondo said, "Our healthcare workers should never have to worry if we have enough PPE to keep them safe. Over the past two months, we've been scouring the earth for supplies and have worked hard to meet the demand on the frontlines. We know that, in order to safely reopen the economy, we need a long-term supply of PPE for all critical infrastructure workers. I look forward to continuing to collaborate with states across the region in order to build and maintain a steady, reliable and affordable supply of PPE."
Governor Baker said, "Massachusetts looks forward to working with other states to identify more options for PPE procurements for our health care workers and public safety personnel."
States Will Aggregate Demand for PPE, Medical Equipment and Testing on a Regional Basis
Regional Supply Chains Will Help Realize Better Pricing, Delivery and Reliability of PPE and Medical Equipment for States
Governor Cuomo: "The word neighbor has a different connotation. You don't normally think of surrounding states as neighbors. You think of the person next door as your neighbor but they are neighbors. They've acted as neighbors. I cannot tell you how supportive Governor Murphy in New Jersey and Governor Lamont in Connecticut and the other governors in our coalition have been. Literally where you can pick up a phone and I can say, I need help with masks. Do you have any extra masks? Do you have any extra gowns? That's how these states responded. It was a beautiful and generous way of operating that was an inspiration to me."
Governor Cuomo: "We're going to form a consortium with our seven Northeast partner states which buy about $5 billion worth of equipment and supplies. That will then increase our market power when we are buying and we will buy as a consortium, price as a consortium, for PPE equipment, ventilators, medical equipment, whatever we need to buy. When you put all those hospitals together, all that public health capacity together -- which will make us more competitive in the international marketplace -- I believe it will save taxpayers money. I also believe it will help us actually get the equipment because we have trouble still getting the equipment and just buying the equipment because these vendors on the other side they're are dealing with countries, they're dealing with the federal government - why should they do business with one state when they can do business with an entire country? So this consortium I think will help us to get the equipment and get it at a better price."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, Delaware Governor John Carney, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker today announced a joint multi-state agreement to develop a regional supply chain for personal protective equipment, other medical equipment and testing.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good afternoon. Nice to see you all here today properly social distanced. For those of you who don't know, to my right is Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor. To my left is Robert Mujica, Director of the Budget. Always happy, always smiling. Today is Sunday, beautiful day in New York City. Sunday for me is a day of reflection. We'll do a little reflecting. Today is day 64 since we closed down New York. Only 64 days, feels like a lifetime, but only 64 days.
Today's numbers: The total hospitalization rate is down and that is good news for all concerned, 9,786, below 10,000 which is a big deal for us. You have to go back to March 18, 19 to get near that number. The total of hospitalizations again is down. The number of intubations is down and that's really good news because intubation is generally bad news. The number of new cases is 789, that's good news. We were hovering at about 900, 1,000. That may be just a reporting anomaly because this is over the weekend and the weekend reporting tends to be a little different. Remember, this reporting system we just put in place. This never happened before where hospitals were reporting on a daily basis and had a lot going on so I wouldn't bet the farm on any of these specific one-day numbers, but the overall trend is good.
The number that is the most important number that we look at, which is still tremendously distressing is the number of deaths, 280. You can see that that number has not moved dramatically in a relatively long period of time. The overall direction is good, even though it's very painful.
I think it's important that we take a moment and learn the lessons of what we've been going through. This has been unprecedented what we've been doing for the past 64 days. This was all an urgent situation, this was all hurry up, we had to quickly figure out a plan, quickly enact a plan. Now we're a couple of months into it and I think simultaneously we should be learning the lessons of what we just went through.
People talk about this like it's going to come and go, it's a once in a lifetime. I don't know that it's a once in a lifetime and I don't know that it's going to come and go. There are people now talking about a second wave, they're talking about a possible mutation of the virus. Caution would suggest that as we go through this, we learn at the same time to make sure, if we have to go through this again or if this is a prolonged situation, that we are learning from what we're implementing.
Edmund Burke, great Irish philosopher, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." Wise words.
The macro questions are bigger than just New York questions, bigger than governor's questions, what happened in China? People are talking about it. Where did this virus start in China? How did it start? How did we not know? Should China have told us? Above my pay grade, but important questions. How did the virus get from China to the United States? We assumed it got a plane from China and flew to the United States. That was the first thinking when this started, now it appears that it's not so.
As we're going through this, what could we have done differently. More importantly, what should we do differently if this is a prolonged situation or if there is a next time. Again, caution. I would assume there's a next time. Anyone who sits back and says, "Well this is the only public health threat that we're going to face," that's not the case. We're seeing increasing threats all across the board. Environmental threats, Mother Nature, natural threats, threats from emergency weather that we've never seen before.
If you look back as far as 1918, when they had the flu pandemic that people talk about, it took 10 months. It came in three different waves and the second wave was worse than the first wave. Even if you put aside all the modern day challenges, when this happened in 1918 it came in 3 different waves. So let's be prepared and intelligent. Some of the lessons to learn, the CDC did a fascinating report that they put out on May 1, which starts to take a deep look at what happened. I think there's a lot of important information in that.
It pointed to something that we've been looking at here in New York. The report says that when they look at the different strains of the virus in the United States that there are different strains. We were all looking at the West Coast. The West Coast had cases well before the East Coast, remember. Maybe 6 weeks before the East Coast. Those strains came from China. What we saw in the State of Washington, what we saw in California, they came from China. Flights from China land predominately on the West Coast. What we have seen in New York didn't come from China, but actually is a different strain of the virus that came from Europe. That's an important fact to know and to study,
They then said in the CDC report, from February you had 139,000 travelers coming from Italy, 1.74 million from other European countries where the outbreak was spreading wildly and rapidly. So, everybody's looking at China and meanwhile the virus had traveled from China to Europe, was in Europe and spreading from Europe. We had European travelers coming. They come to the East Coast. They land in New York and they go to New Jersey and go to Connecticut. They are in the New York area. And we are all still looking at China. We were looking at China, and the travel ban on China may have been helpful, but the horse was already out of the barn in China. The virus had left. The virus was in Europe.
Meanwhile, we have European travelers coming here, and they're bringing the virus which is now a different strain of the virus to the East Coast. This is from that CDC report - the deputy director, the principal deputy director, "Delaying travel bans allowed for the virus to spread throughout the United States and contributed to the initiation and acceleration of domestic COVID cases in March. Extensive travel from Europe, once Europe was having outbreaks really accelerated our importation and the rapid spread. The timing of our travel alert should have been earlier." That is an important fact and something we have to learn from.
A person from the Grossman School of Medicine, "Knowing the number of flights coming into New York from Italy was like watching a train wreck in slow motion." This, nobody was watching Italy and Europe at this at the time. Nobody was even thinking about it. "Today we must consider an outbreak anywhere is an outbred outbreak everywhere." A.J. Parkinson. I think those are words to remember going forward. An outbreak in China in a number of days is going to be in Europe. From Europe, it comes to the United States, assuming it did not come from the United States immediately from China.
Another lesson we have to learn is our hospital system. We talk about the hospital system and you know we don't really have a public health care system. We have a hospital system. We learned the hard way about the capacity, the equipment and management of the hospital system. New York City, we have only 12 public hospitals. They are the Health and Hospitals Corporation; they're run by New York City. But there's only 12 hospitals in that public hospital system. 44 hospitals are private hospitals. They're private institutions. They are regulated by the State, but they are private institutions. They have their own area of expertise. They have their own basic clientele and they're doing business as individual entities, like an individual college. We have a system of colleges, but each college is individual. It's the same with hospitals. Each hospital is an individual entity.
Long Island we have four public hospitals but we have 19 private hospitals. Westchester one public hospital, 12 private. Rockland one public and two private. Hudson Valley and the rest of the state with two public hospitals and 87 private hospitals. So really, your healthcare capacity in the state is all in the hands of private hospitals, right? You have 176 private hospitals in this state. That's the capacity. But that means you now have to rely on private hospitals, get them all to be part of one system, which day to day, that does not happen. They're operating themselves, we have again State regulations that say, "This is how much you must operate." But they operate as individual entities. In the middle of this outbreak, we had to go back and do what we call the surge and flex management system where we said to all 176 private hospitals, "We have to work together and we have to manage this system as one because hospitals are getting overwhelmed."
Maybe within the public system, they can share patients and doctors and staff because you have in New York City, H+H has 12 public hospitals. Okay, you can share among your 12, but we have to get these 176 hospitals now to all work together even with the public hospital. And hospitals were getting overwhelmed, so now you need a system to share patient capacity and share equipment, share ventilators, share staff. That had never been done. We did this all basically on-the-fly. We put together a de facto public health system. But, it was a lot to do on-the-fly and we need to institutionalize these lessons.
Part of what we have to learn is what happens with the equipment. I mean, this was a situation that nobody anticipated. It happened all across the country. You couldn't get enough gowns, you couldn't get enough masks. We are going to put in a State requirement now that every hospital has to have a 90-day supply, their own stockpile of all of the PPE equipment they could need for a 90-day supply at the rate of usage that we saw with the COVID virus. So, every hospital has to have 90-day supply, period. We can't go through this day to day moving masks all across the state, right? This mad scramble we were in and still are in, in many ways. Also, as a nation, we can't go through this again. There was competition among states and there was competition among private entities to get this equipment. The federal government was trying to buy it. I am bidding on behalf of New York; we're bidding against other states. Texas, California and other states across the country are trying to buy the same masks from the same vendor. We literally wound up bidding up the price. I had people in China, I'm trying to contact people in China who can figure out how to buy masks from China.
It was totally inefficient and ineffective. The state of Massachusetts, Governor Baker was good enough to work with Robert Kraft who had a personal airplane that he sent to China to get masks and Massachusetts was good enough to give us some of the masks that a private airplane picked up. I mean this is not the way to deal with this situation. Right? Plus we just drove up prices by our own competition. There was a limited supply that was primarily in China and then you have 50 states and all these private entities and the federal government trying to buy from China. It made no sense so let's fix that. New York State alone buys about $2 billion of medical supplies this year. $2 billion this year and that's one state and that's us purchasing from China and around the world.
We're going to form a consortium with our seven Northeast partner states which buy about $5 billion worth of equipment and supplies. That will then increase our market power when we are buying and we will buy as a consortium, price as a consortium, for PPE equipment, ventilators, medical equipment, whatever we need to buy. When you put all those hospitals together, all that public health capacity together, which will make us more competitive in the international marketplace. I believe it will save taxpayers money. I also believe it will help us actually get the equipment because we have trouble still getting the equipment and just buying the equipment because these vendors on the other side they're are dealing with countries, they're dealing with the federal government - why should they do business with one state when they can do business with an entire country? So this consortium I think will help us to get the equipment and get it at a better price.
We will come up with a regional identification of all the equipment we need. Basically it's all standard equipment. A mask is a mask and a gown is a gown. Let's come up with the total amount that we need. Let's stop doing business with vendors who we found to be irresponsible - and we found out the hard way. I can't tell you how many orders we placed with vendors who are acting basically as brokers who just started businesses in the middle of this pandemic because they saw an opportunity. So let's compare notes among the states to find out who is good to do business and who is not good to do business with. Let's see if we can do the purchasing in this country and let's see if we can do the purchasing in this region. Why are we buying all of this material from china? Literally billions of dollars of PPE. And we'll do it in coordination with the federal government.
But I want to thank our neighbors, our neighboring states. The word neighbor has a different connotation. You don't normally think of surrounding states as neighbors. You think of the person next door as your neighbor but they are neighbors. They've acted as neighbors. I cannot tell you how supportive Governor Murphy in New Jersey and Governor Lamont in Connecticut and the other governors in our coalition have been, literally where you can pick up a phone and I can say, I need help with masks. Do you have any extra masks? Do you have any extra gowns? Can I borrow this? Can I borrow that? Really the way you would deal with a neighbor in an extraordinary circumstance. Right? You would knock on the store door and say, can I borrow this? That's how these states responded. It was a beautiful and generous way of operating that was an inspiration to me. You know, it wasn't I will have my lawyer call your lawyer. It was whatever I can do, I will do. In that spirit we want to keep that coalition together and we want to work together.
We're doing regional planning now on the reopening because every state is linked to every other state. If we do something in New York it affects New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, et cetera. People are very mobile right now so it's a very important relationship for us both productively and from an efficiency point of view and they have been great and they are joining us today.
We have Governor Phil Murphy with us and Governor Ned Lamont, Governor Tom Wolf and Governor John Carney and we'll start with our neighbor from the great state of New Jersey. Governor Phil Murphy, how are you?
Governor Murphy: I'm happy to be on with you. I will be brief and say that I echo literally everything you say including the [inaudible] in terms of what this has been like, the deficiencies as well as the inspiration which we derived from our neighbors notably beginning with you and all the other governors who are on with us today. It has been truly an inspiration.
On behalf of the 9 million of us in New Jersey, I would like to say thank you. We [inaudible] and bartering for equipment, PPE, ventilators, et cetera, and we are still doing it. Someone said to me a couple days ago that gowns have become the new ventilators and so we are still there. So the notion of coordinating together as a region makes enormous amount of sense so sign New Jersey up. We've moved in New Jersey alone 21 million pieces of PPE in the past two months. Our line of goods [inaudible] beforehand. This makes so much sense. I really look forward. Again, if you suggest that we coordinated actively as we [inaudible] and now have a regional council where we put not just the governors on today, but also Rhode Island and Massachusetts, this is a perfect extension of that relationship.
I echo one of your comments that not only should we not have to be scouring the world for this, but how do we make it in the USA and better yet made in our states and so that's something I think we all want to strive for. We're doing that in New Jersey, we want to figure out a way to make the stuff here. And lastly, and you said this, but to repeat, we've all got to do within our own four walls what we do with the regional cooperation matters so much, and it's a great example of that. It's a brilliant extension of our ongoing cooperation. And then lastly, none of this is in lieu of the partnership of the federal government, as you rightfully point out. We have all of the above, what's good for our own citizens, what's good for the region, and we work with the federal government every step of the way. Thank you for having me on today. Thank you to you Governor Cuomo and to each of my fellow governors in this room. I'm really looking forward to working with you in the better days ahead.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you very much, Governor Murphy. I think the governors on this phone, we've learned so much about PPE over the past few weeks. I think we could go make gowns ourselves at this point. I think we've learned now. Give us some sewing machines, I think we can actually contribute. So thank you very much, Phil, God bless you, and stay well and anything you need, we're here. Thank you. We'll go now to Governor Lamont, great state of Connecticut. Governor Lamont, thank you very much for being with us and thank you for all you've done, not just for the people of Connecticut, but for the entire northeast. Good to be with you, Ned.
Governor Lamont: And back at you, Andrew. On behalf of Connecticut, New York and Andrew Cuomo have been a very good neighbor for us. And as you know, we got into this together. We realized what we had to do when it came to closing down parts of our service economy. We did that together, we're opening it up together. And that's the way it works best. And as you point out, when it comes to the partners thing, look, we've learned something, right? We can wait for the national stockpile; we can wait for that plane to land from China. Let's see what we can do ourselves, and as you point out, we're much stronger together. I wouldn't mind having some of that New York purchasing power. Thanks for sharing that with Connecticut going forward. And just as importantly, what we can produce together as well. I mean, Phil Murphy, you've got that amazing pharmaceutical industry in New Jersey. Help us out with the reagents. And what we can do in terms of gowns from being produced in Rhode Island. What we can all do together to make sure that this next round, we control more of our own destiny. And to those that say, you know, where have you been, and you're ordering up all of the Christmas trees and they're going to arrive on December 26, I say, I'm afraid this is still just beginning, as you pointed out, Governor Cuomo. And we're planning for the next round of this, if there is a next round, making sure that we control our own destiny going forward, we do it much better together. Thanks for getting us together, Andrew.
Governor Cuomo: My pleasure. Thank you very much, Governor, and yo're right, look, we're spending billions of dollars. Why not buy from our own vendors and our own region? Why are we buying from China, right? I'm sure there are a lot of businesses within our own states that if they knew they had they had that kind of purchasing that they were looking at, that they would either adapt their businesses or grow their businesses so we could buy from them. Plus, you're right, we would control our own destiny rather than everyone trying to figure out how to buy from China. So thank you very much, Governor Lamont, God bless you, we're here. Let's go now to Governor Wolf from Pennsylvania, good to be with you Tom. Thank you very much for everything you've been doing. Thank you for being a great neighbor to the State of New York and all your surrounding states.
Governor Wolf: Thank you Governor Cuomo, and thank you very much for organizing this. Again, a few weeks ago we all got together and announced that we were going to work together to fight this pandemic. And we said then that by working together we can do a lot more than we can do if each of us works on our own. And I think today is a specific example of that. We can work together to buy things that we need to allow our healthcare system to have the capacity it needs to fight this fight. We need to help our hospitals, we need to help our healthcare workers, we need to help our long-term care facilities, our first responders, all those things. And what you're doing here and what we're doing is actually pooling together to make sure we're doing all those things. And part of this is testing. It's not just the equipment. We really need to work together to build the capacity to test or we're not going to be able to give our citizens the confidence they need to go back to work. They're not going to have the confidence we need them to have to go back to school or go back to the store, or to go back to worship. So all of those things are really important, and by working together we can pool our financial resources, which are really important and significant, as you pointed out, Governor Cuomo. We can actually pool the brainpower that exists, the great institutions in our areas, and the manufacturers who make this stuff. All of that we can pool together, and if we can do that even with something as difficult as testing, I think we're going ot make sure that we get through this in the best possible way. So thank you for pulling this together, this is really important, and I'm proud to be with you.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you, Governor Wolf, and you're so right. Look, we're creating in some ways new industries, right. Who ever heard of the testing industry or the tracing industry? Or these reagents that all these tests now use? Even the demand on PPE, I mean this is a whole new world for all of us. But there's also an economic opportunity in it, and we should take advantage of it. Because we need it and it's not going away, and it's going to be a major industry going forward, so let's make sure it happens here. But Tom, thank you very much. Thank you for all the help, and thank you for everything you're doing, really. You're an inspiration for all of us. Thank you, Tom.
Governor Cuomo: And we have Governor John Carney with us from Delaware. John, thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for all the help. Thank you for all the support. Thank you for the friendship through all of this, which is also very important, just the personal support is important as we're going through this as colleagues. Thanks for being with us today, John.
Governor Carney: Thank you, Governor Cuomo, for including Delaware in this coalition. Thank you for your great leadership there in the State of New York, and particularly metro New York City, with your colleague governors on either side of you. You're an inspiration, frankly, to all of us. Our hearts go out to you as we see the numbers. I was happy to see your numbers on the chart at the beginning of your conference as they trend downward. That is a very good and positive thing. And thanks for including us, a state of - we like to refer to ourselves as a state of neighbors - there is just shy of 1 million Delawareans on the southern end of this geographic coalition on this side of I-95 and the Amtrak northeast corridor which connects all of us.
The two governors at the bottom of my screen are great partners, Governor Wolf and Governor Murphy, on either side of the state of Delaware, really important coordination and collaboration. But this particular initiative, with respect to purchasing together PPE and most importantly, as Governor Wolf mentioned, testing equipment and capacity is so incredibly important for a small state like ours. To have the purchasing power, Governor Cuomo of New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Rhode Island is just so incredibly important for us in terms of getting the right pricing. If we are going head-to-head with New York, were not going to get it.
If we along are shoulder to shoulder with you and with Governor Murphy and Governor Wolf, we have a chance of getting a better price and getting the product that we need. Through all this too, the other thing that was interesting to me and joining the coalition was all of the assets that the other states can bring to the table in terms of intellectual capacity in your research institutions and your hospitals. Because we know there are going to be breakthroughs, or we hope, in testing and other kinds of technology that will help us as we respond to this.
So, I couldn't be happier to be a part of this coalition and a part of your leadership team, Governor Cuomo, with again with my two neighbors here in the southern end of the coalition. And to each of you, thanks for the great work that you are providing to the citizens of your state. I tell people all the time that it is going to be way harder, the decisions we have to make reopening our economies in phases than it was in shutting things down, at least in my view, because of the balance we need to strike there. And we will do that working together, with the expertise and the purchasing power, in particular, that this initiative will bring to the State of Delaware. So, thank you very much.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you Governor Carney. Governor Carney is right. It was easier to shut down then it will be to reopen. Shutting down was you walk into the basement, you take the power switch and go from on to off, right? There was an urgent need. It was an emergency. Reopening is more of an art form and I thank my gubernatorial colleagues for doing this together.
We also have Governor Raimondo from the State of Rhode Island and Governor Baker from the State of Massachusetts who are part of the coalition. You know, you go through situations in life which are unexpected. Okay, you do your best and then you learn from those and then you grow. That is what we are trying to do here today because people expect more from government than ever before. I believe this has been transformative for our generation.
Think about when was the last time government was this vital? Maybe in a war like World War II when government had to mobilize overnight. But, literally for decades, you have not seen government this essential to human life, literally. Government has to work and it has to work well. It is not for the faint of heart now. And people want government to perform and government is making decisions every day that impact their lives. They deserve the best government. They are paying for it. They deserve it. They deserve competence, expertise and smarts and for government to be doing creative things and learning like we're doing here today. At the same time, government is working. We are trying our best, we're working seven days a week, 24 hours per day. We are doing a lot of good work. A lot creative work.
But this is not just about government. It is too easy to point fingers. Well, this one wants to do that. This one has to do that. Every person has a part in this. Every person has a part. Driving around New York City today, and I was here yesterday, you know, we are all very thankful to our health care heroes, our front-line workers, our essential workers. You watch television, there are all these nice commercials thanking everyone for what they did, and we should, nurses, doctors, police officers, transit workers, God bless them. But if you really want to say thank you, make their life easier by not getting sick and not making someone else sick.
An individual's role is to act responsibly and intelligently for yourself and for your family and for your community. Wear a mask. Wear a mask. I mean, that is the basic step, right? Socially distance. If you can't socially distance, you're in New York City, you're going to walk up next to a person, wear a mask. Okay, it's not the most attractive garment ever created, so what? Well, I don't like it, it feels uncomfortable, unnatural. So what? You want to honor the healthcare workers and the people who literally gave their lives, in some cases, for what they did here.
Act responsibly. Wear a mask. I know the weather is getting warmer. I know people want to get out of the house. Fine, wear a mask and socially distance. That is your social responsibility in the middle of this overall pandemic. And when we talk about New Yorkers together and this spirit of unity and how people are helping one another, and how tough we are and how smart we are and how disciplined we are, and how we love one another - show it. You know how you show love? By wearing a mask - please.
May 4, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Outlines Additional Guidelines for When Regions Can Re-Open. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines-additional-guidelines-when-regions-can
State Will Monitor Four Core Factors to Determine if a Region Can Re-Open: Number of New Infections, Health Care Capacity, Diagnostic Testing Capacity and Contact Tracing Capacity
Outlines New Safety Precautions Each Business Must Put in Place Upon Re-Opening
More Than One Million New Yorkers Have Been Tested for COVID-19 to Date
New York's National Guard Has Made Nearly 300,000 Testing Kits to Collect Samples
Announces Special Enrollment through the Marketplace will Remain Open Through June 15, 2020
Confirms 2,538 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 318,953; New Cases in 45 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today outlined additional guidelines for when regions can re-open. The state will monitor four core factors to determine if a region can re-open:
New Infections: Based on guidelines from the CDC, regions must have at least 14 days of decline in total net hospitalizations and deaths on a 3-day rolling average. In regions with few COVID cases, the region cannot exceed 15 net new total hospitalizations or 5 new deaths on a 3-day rolling average. In order to monitor the potential spread of infection in a region, a region must have fewer than two new COVID patients admitted per 100,000 residents per day.
Health Care Capacity: Every region must have the health care capacity to handle a potential surge in cases. Regions must have at least 30 percent total hospital and ICU beds available. This is coupled with the new requirement that hospitals have at least 90 days of personal protective equipment stockpiled.
Diagnostic Testing Capacity: Each region must have the capacity to conduct 30 diagnostic tests for every 1,000 residents per month. The state is rapidly expanding capacity statewide to help all regions meet this threshold.
Contact Tracing Capacity: Regions must have a baseline of 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents, and additional tracers based on the projected number of cases in the region. The state is currently building an army of contact tracers with Mayor Bloomberg to meet the needs of each region statewide.
Governor Cuomo also outlined which industries and businesses can open in each phase of the state's re-opening plan. Businesses considered "more essential" with inherent low risks of infection in the workplace and to customers will be prioritized, followed by other businesses considered "less essential" or those that present a higher risk of infection spread. Regions must not open attractions or businesses that would draw a large number of visitors from outside the local area.
Re-opening is not going to happen statewide all at once - New York has diverse regions and those regions have different circumstances.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
The Governor also outlined new safety precautions that each business must put in place upon re-opening to help lower the risk of spreading the virus. Businesses will be required to:
Adjust workplace hours and shift design as necessary to reduce density in the workplace;
Enact social distancing protocols;
Restrict non-essential travel for employees;
Require all employees and customers to wear masks if in frequent contact with others;
Implement strict cleaning and sanitation standards;
Enact a continuous health screening process for individuals to enter the workplace;
Continue tracing, tracking and reporting of cases; and
Develop liability processes.
The Governor also announced that more than one million New Yorkers have already been tested for COVID-19 to date.
The Governor also announced New York's National Guard has made nearly 300,000 testing kits to collect samples, 60,000 of which are being sent to labs and hospitals across New York State.
The Governor also announced the special enrollment period through the NY State of Health Health Plan Marketplace will remain open through June 15, 2020.
"While we continue to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we can begin to focus on re-opening, but we have to be careful and use the information we've learned so we don't erase the strides we've already made," Governor Cuomo said. "Re-opening is not going to happen statewide all at once - New York has diverse regions and those regions have different circumstances, so rather than wait for the whole state to be ready to re-open we are going to analyze the situation on a regional basis. We will measure whether a region can re-open based on four factors - the number of new infections, health care capacity, diagnostic testing and contact tracing - and we will continue to monitor these factors throughout the re-opening process to prevent a second wave of the virus and protect the health and safety New Yorkers."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,538 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 318,953 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 318,953 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,287
29
Allegany
35
0
Broome
334
7
Cattaraugus
53
0
Cayuga
51
0
Chautauqua
37
1
Chemung
126
1
Chenango
100
1
Clinton
68
2
Columbia
213
4
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
62
1
Dutchess
3,131
45
Erie
3,802
92
Essex
29
0
Franklin
16
1
Fulton
84
2
Genesee
159
4
Greene
154
3
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
63
1
Jefferson
63
1
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
85
2
Madison
217
66
Monroe
1595
29
Montgomery
56
0
Nassau
36,965
185
Niagara
493
19
NYC
175,651
1,320
Oneida
550
61
Onondaga
971
19
Ontario
96
1
Orange
9,015
48
Orleans
97
0
Oswego
67
1
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,026
13
Rensselaer
337
15
Rockland
12,095
70
Saratoga
367
4
Schenectady
535
8
Schoharie
45
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
45
0
St. Lawrence
178
1
Steuben
219
1
Suffolk
35,077
222
Sullivan
976
25
Tioga
90
0
Tompkins
129
0
Ulster
1,354
13
Warren
192
4
Washington
188
2
Wayne
76
1
Westchester
30,097
213
Wyoming
69
0
Yates
19
0
May 4, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Outlines Additional Guidelines for When Regions Can Re-Open. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines-1
State Will Monitor Four Core Factors to Determine if a Region Can Re-Open: Number of New Infections, Health Care Capacity, Diagnostic Testing Capacity and Contact Tracing Capacity
Outlines New Safety Precautions Each Business Must Put in Place Upon Re-Opening
More Than One Million New Yorkers Have Been Tested for COVID-19 to Date
New York's National Guard Has Made Nearly 300,000 Testing Kits to Collect Samples
Announces Special Enrollment through the Marketplace will Remain Open Through June 15, 2020
Confirms 2,538 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 318,953; New Cases in 45 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "Reopening is more difficult than the closedown. The closedown was relatively simple, right? You go into the basement, you throw the big power switch, and everything just goes down. Close the businesses. Stay at home. It was a blunt operation and when that was done all across the country, just stop everything now. When you go to restart, the reopening, now knowing what we know, it's more nuanced. You have to be more careful. And again, no one has done this before, and no one has been here before. So, first, start by learning the lessons that we did learn through this experience."
Cuomo: "Government is fundamentally in a different position than it was just a couple of months ago. This is for real now, right? Government politics - it's not about optics, it's not about celebrity, it's not about press releases, it's not about what I put on Instagram yesterday. This is about government leaders performance, their expertise. This is a situation where their competence and their ability can be the difference between life and death, literally. What the governments have done - federal, state, local - what we've done in this state has literally saved lives."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo outlined additional guidelines for when regions can re-open. The state will monitor four core factors to determine if a region can re-open:
New Infections: Based on guidelines from the CDC, regions must have at least 14 days of decline in total net hospitalizations and deaths on a 3-day rolling average. In regions with few COVID cases, the region cannot exceed 15 net new total hospitalizations or 5 new deaths on a 3-day rolling average. In order to monitor the potential spread of infection in a region, a region must have fewer than two new COVID patients admitted per 100,000 residents per day.
Health Care Capacity: Every region must have the health care capacity to handle a potential surge in cases. Regions must have at least 30 percent total hospital and ICU beds available. This is coupled with the new requirement that hospitals have at least 90 days of personal protective equipment stockpiled.
Diagnostic Testing Capacity: Each region must have the capacity to conduct 30 diagnostic tests for every 1,000 residents per month. The state is rapidly expanding capacity statewide to help all regions meet this threshold.
Contact Tracing Capacity: Regions must have a baseline of 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 residents, and additional tracers based on the projected number of cases in the region. The state is currently building an army of contact tracers with Mayor Bloomberg to meet the needs of each region statewide.
Governor Cuomo also outlined which industries and businesses can open in each phase of the state's re-opening plan. Businesses considered "more essential" with inherent low risks of infection in the workplace and to customers will be prioritized, followed by other businesses considered "less essential" or those that present a higher risk of infection spread. Regions must not open attractions or businesses that would draw a large number of visitors from outside the local area.
The Governor also outlined new safety precautions that each business must put in place upon re-opening to help lower the risk of spreading the virus. Businesses will be required to:
Adjust workplace hours and shift design as necessary to reduce density in the workplace;
Enact social distancing protocols;
Restrict non-essential travel for employees;
Require all employees and customers to wear masks if in frequent contact with others;
Implement strict cleaning and sanitation standards;
Enact a continuous health screening process for individuals to enter the workplace;
Continue tracing, tracking and reporting of cases; and
Develop liability processes.
The Governor also announced that more than one million New Yorkers have already been tested for COVID-19 to date.
The Governor also announced New York's National Guard has made nearly 300,000 testing kits to collect samples, 60,000 of which are being sent to labs and hospitals across New York State.
The Governor also announced the special enrollment period through the NY State of Health Health Plan Marketplace will remain open through June 15, 2020.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. Thank you all for being here. From my right, let me introduce who I have with me and acknowledge some special friends. To my right is Gareth Rhodes, who has been,, works with the Department of Financial Services but he's been working with us in Albany during this coronavirus pandemic. To my left, Melissa DeRosa, who's secretary to the governor. To her left, Robert Mujica, who's the state budget directly. He doesn't smile much nowadays because the state budget is not in great shape, but when the federal government does the right thing and gives us funding, we expect he's going to smile, that big smile again. It's a pleasure to be in Rochester with so many of my friends who've done such great work for the state. Former lieutenant governor Bob Duffy, who worked with me when we first got started and has done great work for the entire State of New York. Danny Wegman, pleasure to be with you. Wegmans is a great New York corporation, and Danny's a great civic leader, and they've been very helpful through this situation. Also, thank you for allowing us to do the antibody testing at Wegmans, that's been very, very helpful. And we thank you for everything you've done. And Nicole Wegman, thank you, pleasure, thank you for being on our New York Forward advisory board to help us going forward and find our way through this.
Let's give you an update on where we are today. The total number of hospitalizations is down. You see that curve coming down. You see that mountain that we went up. Now we're on the other side of the mountain. You start to see the shape of the mountain. Unfortunately the decline from the mountain is not as steep as the incline, right? And the big question for us in New York and every state across the nation has been how fast and how low does that decline go, right? How fast does the decline actually happen? And what is the lowest level that the decline will reach? Unfortunately you see that we were hoping for a quick up, plateau, at the top, which is what they talked about, but a fast decline. You see the decline is, again, not as steep as the incline. But it is a decline, and that's good news.
The net change in total hospitalizations is down, net change in intubations is down, and that's always good news. When a person is intubated, roughly 80 percent of the time, there's not a good outcome. So the fact that intubations is down is good news. And then the other end is how many new cases are coming in the door every day? How many new diagnoses in COVID cases? And that number is also declining. So not only are the number of people in hospitals coming down, but the number of new cases coming in the door is down. And that's good news because it had plateaued at about 900 statewide for a few days. But this number is down at 700, and that's a good number. I would take this with a grain of salt, as they say, because this is reporting from yesterday, which was a Sunday, and sometimes we get different results on the weekend. Remember, this whole reporting system has just been put in place. This never happened before. This is now every hospital in the state reporting, every day, for the first time. So, it's a plus or minus across the board.
This is the number that haunts me every day, and this number is not declining anywhere nearly as fast as we would like to see it decline. Still 226 New Yorkers who passed away. And so we don't become immune, we talk about these numbers. 226 families, right, that's 226 wives or brothers or sisters or children that are now suffering the loss of a loved one. So we remember them in our thoughts and our prayers. People are all talking about reopening, which we should be talking about. This is not a sustainable situation. Close down everything, close down the economy, lock yourself in the home.
You can do it for a short period of time but you can't do it forever. But, reopening is more difficult than the closedown. The closedown was relatively simple, right? You go into the basement, you throw the big power switch, and everything just goes down. Close the businesses. Stay at home. It was a blunt operation and when that was done all across the country, just stop everything now. When you go to restart, the reopening, now knowing what we know, it's more nuanced. You have to be more careful. And again, no one has done this before, and no one has been here before. So, first, start by learning the lessons that we did learn through this experience.
And second, let's be smart about what we do. And I get the emotion, and I get the impatience, and I get the anxiety. We all feel it. When I say the situation was unsustainable, it's unsustainable on many levels. It's unsustainable economically, it's unsustainable personally. A lot of anxiety is now all through our community. We see it in increased alcoholism, increased substance abuse, increased domestic violence. So this is a very, very difficult period, and people want to move on. Yes, but let's be smart about what we do and let's learn the lessons.
One of the lessons is, we have never been here before, and we didn't really know what was going on. CDC releases a report, end of last week, that says the virus was actually coming to the east coast from Europe. Everybody was looking at China for all those months. China was last November, December, the virus migrated from China while we were all staring at China, and went to Europe. And the strain that came to the United States came from Europe. We had people in the airports stopping people from China, testing people from China, the federal government did a lot of testing, a lot of screening, people getting off planes, from China. Yes, but meanwhile the people from Europe were walking right past them. And that's where the strain came from that was infecting this area. And that's what the CDC just learned last week, and this is going back to February, right? On one of the most studied topics ever.
Again, just learn the lessons of what happened. You now add that piece of information on the Europe trips, and then you see the number of flights that came from Europe during that time, where they landed, and now you - It explains why you've seen the outbreak in Chicago that you've seen, why you've seen the number of cases in New York because, yes, the flights were landing here, people were coming from Italy, and the UK, and from European countries, and nobody thought to screen them. Nobody was on guard. And you add that to the density of New York, especially in New York City and that virus just took off, okay. We didn't know. We didn't know. Now we do. We also can look back in history and look at that 1918 flu pandemic they talk about. The places that opened too soon saw that flu come right back. And by the way, that flu was not one wave. That was three waves: first wave, second wave, third wave. The second wave was worse than the first wave.
And you see, watch the other countries that went through this before us, right? We're not the first one down the chute. There were other countries that went down before us. You see they wanted to reopen also. They were feeling the pressure on reopening. And you study those cases and you see that you reopen too soon or you reopen unintelligently and you can then have an immediate backlash. And that's not speculation. That is looking at other countries, and look at what has happened around the world. And then you talk to the experts who know, listen to what they're saying. Dr. Fauci, who I think is one of the best voices and minds on this, Dr. Fauci's been through this in different iterations. He was one of the pioneers on the HIV virus and AIDS. And he says we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. Could be. Why? Because he doesn't know. He's not sure but could be for a bad fall or bad winter.
Okay, so put all of this in the equation and then also acknowledge and actualize that the truth is that nobody knows what happens next, and when it happens. Well, how can that be that nobody knows? We're so sophisticated. We have so much intelligence. We have so many experts. This is the United States of America. How can it be that no one knows? Because no one knows. I speak to the best experts globally, globally, and nobody can tell you for sure. Now, experts, we look to experts, and we expect them to know, so we push them to know. "Answer the question. Tell me when. What's going to happen in September? What's going to happen in December?" Sometimes the answer is, "I don't know." Sometimes that's the honest answer.
I was talking to my daughters last night, and they said, "You know, you say at your briefings, I don't know. How can you say that?" First, I'm not really sure they watch my briefings. But they're right. Sometimes I say I don't know. Why? Because I don't know. And if you don't know, say you don't know. And I speak, again, to the best minds in this country, the best minds around the globe, and they don't know. So, if you don't know, say you don't know. It doesn't mean you're not smart, no reason to get defensive. I don't know. When you know what you don't know, and admit it, it will actually keep you safe. My daughters don't quite agree with this yet, but I haven't given up on the concept. Know what you don't know. Know when you don't know what the future holds, you can be safe because then you can prepare for different possibilities. And that's where we are. We don't know. But we will be prepared for all possibilities.
So, reopening. Chart a course. With the best information you have, learning from the lessons you have, but be able to correct that course depending on what happens, which means, don't act emotionally. Don't act because "I feel this, I feel that." Because someone said, "Well other states are opening, so you must be able to open, if other states are opening." Forget the anecdotal, forget the atmospheric, forget the environmental, forget the emotional. Look at the data. Look at the measurements. Look at the science. Follow the facts. And that's what we've done here from day one. This is no gut instinct. This is look at the data, look at the science, look at the metrics. Move forward, measuring what you can and what you know, and then be prepared to adjust. "Well, I want specificity, I want to know for sure." You don't. But there's liberation in knowing that. So, let's do this intelligently, based on metrics, and we'll see what happens and we'll adjust to whatever happens. "Well, what does that mean on metrics?" You can measure this. And we have to measure this. You look at that percentage and the rate of hospitalizations, which we have, right? That's the chart that goes up and down. You watch that hospitalization rate, do your diagnostic testing so you know how many people are testing positive, and you can watch that rate going up or down or flat. Do the contact tracing, so after the testing, you follow up and you do that contact tracing. And you are then reducing the infection spread by isolating the positives. If you do those things, you will control the rate of transmission of the virus, which is everything.
Nobody says you're going to eliminate the virus in the short-term. Nobody. But you can control the rate of transmission, and if you can control the rate of transmission, you can control the rate of transmission from becoming an outbreak or an epidemic or overwhelming your public health system. That is the best you can do. So, control the rate of transmission to what they call 1.1 or less. 1.1 is every person infects 1.1 other people, more than one other person. If you're doing that, that is an outbreak. That means it's going to increase exponentially and it's going to be out of control. As long as your rate of transmission is manageable and low, then reopen your businesses and reopen the businesses in phases, so you're increasing that activity level while you're watching the rate of transmission. The rate of transmission goes up, stop the reopening, close the valve, close the valve right away. So, reopen businesses, do it in phases and watch that rate of transmission. It gets over 1.1, stop everything immediately. That's where the other countries wound up.
They started to reopen, they exceeded the 1.1. It became an outbreak again. They had to slow down. Rather than starting and stopping, you'd rather have a controlled start, so you don't have to stop, right? And that's what you learn from the other countries. You reopen too fast, then you have to stop, and nobody wants to have gone through all of this and then start just to stop again. Well, how does that happen?
First of all, it's not going to happen statewide. This state has different regions which are in much different situations than other regions in this state. And rather than wait for the whole state to be ready, reopen on a regional basis. If upstate has to wait for downstate to be ready, they're going to be waiting a long time. So, analyze the situation on a regional basis, okay? And you look at a region on four measures -- the number of new infections, your health care capacity. If the infections go too high you overwhelm your health system, now you're Italy with people on gurneys in a hallway because your hospital system can't handle it. Do your diagnostic testing so you're seeing how the infection is increasing or decreasing. And do the contact tracing, have that system in place so when you're testing, you find a positive, you trace the contacts from that positive person and you're isolating them to bring down the rate. And you do that on a regional basis. That system has to be in place for a regional basis.
How do you start? When can I start reopening? We look at guidelines from the CDC, which say a region has to have at least 14 days of decline in total hospitalizations and death on a three-day rolling average. So, you take a three-day average, you have to have 14 days of decline. You can't have more than 15 new total cases or five new deaths on a three-day rolling average. This is telling you that you're basically at a plateau level that you can actually start to reopen. Then you're watching the rate of infection and the spread of the infection, and the benchmark there is fewer than two new covid patients per 100,000 residents, right? It's based on your population to account for the variance in the different sizes of regions across the state. Then, anticipate, protect yourself from all possibilities. Well, what if we have a surge again? Never fill your hospitals to more than 70 percent capacity. Leave 30 percent in case you have a surge. Remember, this virus is tricky. The rate of infection -- a person who gets infected today shows up in the hospital ten days from today or two weeks from today. So, that infection rate goes up, you don't feel it for two weeks. There's a lag to it. You want to make sure you have 30 percent of the hospital beds available in case you have that surge. Also, learn the lessons from before. Every hospital has to have 90 days of PPE for that hospital, at the rate that they have been using it during COVID. We cannot have another mad scramble where nurses and doctors don't have gowns and masks, etcetera, because the hospitals don't have the necessary stockpile. So make sure every hospital has the stockpile.
On the testing, we have done really remarkable work on testing. One million New Yorkers have now been tested believe it or not and the CDC Coronavirus Task Force for the White House recommends that for a region to reopen, you have 30 tests for every 1,000 residents ready to go.
So what testing capacity do we need for a region to reopen? You have to be prepared to do 30 tests for every 1,000 residents. New York is doing more tests than any country in the state by far. New York is doing more tests than any country on the globe per capita. So we're way ahead in testing but it doesn't matter what we're doing statewide. To open a region, that region has to have a testing capacity of 30 per 1,000.
The National Guard has been doing a great job for us in putting together testing kits and distributing testing kits and we want to thank them very much but we have to have those tests and we have to have what they call tracers, contact tracers, in place and Mayor Bloomberg has been very helpful, former mayor of New York City, in putting together this tracing system.
This has never existed before on this scale. A group of people who literally trace contacts from a person who's positive. Who did you have dinner with last night? Who did you have dinner with two nights ago? Who might you have been in contact with? And then contacting those people to say, do you have any symptoms? If you do, you should know you were with John Smith. John Smith tested positive. He said he went to dinner with you. You should be on alert. That whole tracing system has never been done, not only in this state, but in this country. So that all has to be set up and it has to be done.
Once that is all done then you can talk about reopening businesses. Well, which businesses do we open first? You open businesses first that are most essential and pose the lowest risk, okay? Most essential and the lowest risk. Phase one, we're talking about construction, manufacturing, and select retail with curbside pickup. They are the most essential with the lowest risk. Second phase, professional services, retail, administrative support, real estate. Third phase, restaurant, food services, accommodation. Fourth, arts, entertainment, recreation, education.
Remember, density is not your friend here. Large gatherings are not your friend. That's where the virus tends to spread. That's why those situations would be down at the end.
Then we need businesses to also reimagine how they're going to do business and get ready to protect their workforce, to change their physical environment to the extent they need to and to change their processes to make sure people can socially distance, people remain in a safe environment. And that's going to be up to businesses to come up with ways to reconfigure their workplace and their processes to make this work and that's business by business. Government can say these are the standards but a business is going to figure out how to do that.
When you look at this state, there are some regions that right now by the numbers pose a lower risk, some that pose a higher risk. We can tell you by region right now, of those criteria that we went through, which ones are in place for which region, so which ones have the right hospitalization, the right testing regimen, the right contact tracing regimen, and which ones still have work to do in those areas. And this is going to be region by region and each region has to put together the leaders in those respective areas who put together this system and monitored this system literally on a daily basis. So, they're getting all that input, all those specifics, all that data, and then day by day they're making a decision as to how to proceed with reopening based on the data. Based on the facts. That'll be a little different for every region in this state.
May 15th is when the statewide PAUSE order - P-A-U-S-E not P-A-W-S - the PAUSE order. The PAUSE order was stop all businesses, stay at home. That expires on May 15th. May 15th, regions can start to reopen and do their own analysis. But, these are the facts that they have to have in place to do it. Start now, don't wait until May 15th. Don't call me up on May 15th and say, "Well, the PAUSE order expired, I want to open." Because I'm going to ask you the questions I just presented. Do you have a healthcare system in place? Is your health system ready? Can your hospitals handle it? Do you have testing in place? Do you have tracing in place? Have you talked to the businesses about how they're going to reopen?
So, we have a couple of weeks, but this is what local leaders - this is what a community has to deal with to reopen safely and intelligently, in my opinion. This can't just be we want to get out of the house, we're going. No. Let's be smart, let's be intelligent, let's learn from the past, let's do it based on facts.
You know, we are at a different time and place. Government is fundamentally in a different position than it was just a couple of months ago. This is for real now, right? Government politics - it's not about optics, it's not about celebrity, it's not about press releases, it's not about what I put on Instagram yesterday. This is about government leaders performance, their expertise. This is a situation where their competence and their ability can be the difference between life and death, literally. What the governments have done - federal, state, local - what we've done in this state has literally saved lives. We've reduced all the projected hospitalization rates dramatically. By about 100,000 New Yorkers.
100,000 fewer New Yorkers were hospitalized than they predicted. 100,000. Thank about that - if we had 100,000 people in our hospital system. First of all, our hospital system would've collapsed if the projections were true. If we didn't change those projections. We literally saved lives. How many of those 100,000 would've been hospitalized and would've died?
So, we've done great work at a tremendous cost and tremendous hardship, but we've done great work. We just have to remain vigilant and smart and competent going forward. And that's what New York tough means. New York tough means we're tough, but we're smart, we're disciplined, we're unified, and we are loving. It's the love of community and love of each other and respect for each other which is what has gotten us through this and will continue to.
May 5, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo on Reopening Economies Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: 'The Fundamental Question Which We're Not Articulating is How Much is a Human Life Worth?' https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-reopening-economies-amid-covid-19-pandemic
Governor Cuomo: "There's a conversation that is going on about reopening that we are not necessarily explicit about, but which is very important. There's a question that is being debated right under the surface and the decisions we make on reopening are really profound decisions. The fundamental question which we're not articulating is how much is a human life worth? How much do we think a human life is worth?
Cuomo: "To me, I say cost of a human - a human life is priceless, period. Our reopening plan doesn't have a tradeoff. Our reopening plan says you monitor the data, you monitor the transmission rate, you monitor the hospitalization rate, you monitor the death rate. If it goes up, you have a circuit breaker, you stop. You close the valve on reopening. But it is a conversation that we should have openly. Hard conversation, painful conversation, controversial conversation, yes, all of the above. But, it's also the right conversation because those are the decisions we're making."
Earlier today at his daily briefing, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo spoke about reopening economies amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, saying, "The fundamental question which we're not articulating is how much is a human life worth?"
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
One point I want to make about reopening, not just in this state, but all across this nation. There's a conversation that is going on about reopening that we are not necessarily explicit about, but which is very important. There's a question that is being debated right under the surface and the decisions we make on reopening are really profound decisions. The fundamental question which we're not articulating is how much is a human life worth? How much do we think a human life is worth? There's a cost of staying closed, no doubt. Economic cost, personal cost. There's also a cost of reopening quickly. Either option has a cost.
You stay closed, there's a cost. You reopen quickly and there's a cost. The faster we reopen, the lower the economic cost; but the higher the human cost because the more lives lost. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making. What is that balance? What is that trade off? Because it is very real. If you look at the projection models of how many lives will be lost, you'll notice they changed recently. Why did they change? And they went up dramatically. Why? Because now they're factoring in the reopening plans and the reopening schedules that states are announcing. The federal government's estimate, federal government's estimate, FEMA, has increased from 25,000 to 200,000 the number of daily cases by June.
Think about that increase. The IHME, which is a foundation model supported by Gates, which is the preferred model by the White House. When they were projecting deaths by August 4, they projected in early April, 60,000 deaths. They projected, mid-April, 60,300 deaths, actually a little lower. The new projections are 134,000 deaths. How did it go from 60,000 deaths to 134,000 deaths? This is the model which the White House relies on. When the director of the institute was asked why those revisions happened, the director said rising mobility in most US states as well as the easing of social distancing measures expected in 31 states by May 11th, indicating that growing contacts among people will promote transmission of the coronavirus. That's a very nice way of saying when you accelerate the reopening, you will have more people coming in contact with other people - you're relaxing social distancing. The more people in contact with other people, the higher the infection rate of the spread of the virus. The more people who get infected, the more people die. We know that. That's why the projection models are going up.
There's a cost of staying closed. There's also a cost of reopening quickly. That is the hard truth that we are all dealing with. Let's be honest about, let's be open about it. Let's not camouflage the actual terms of the discussion that we're having. The question comes back to how much is a human life worth? Do you see that projection model go from 25 to 200,000 cases from FEMA. You see the number of deaths go from 60,000 to 134,000. How much is a human life worth? That's the real discussion that no one is admitting openly or freely, but we should.
To me, I say cost of a human - a human life is priceless, period. Our reopening plan doesn't have a tradeoff. Our reopening plan says you monitor the data, you monitor the transmission rate, you monitor the hospitalization rate, you monitor the death rate. If it goes up, you have a circuit breaker, you stop. You close the valve on reopening. But it is a conversation that we should have openly. Hard conversation, painful conversation, controversial conversation, yes, all of the above. But, it's also the right conversation because those are the decisions we're making.
May 5, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Collaboration with Gates Foundation to Develop a Blueprint to Reimagine Education in the New Normal. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-collaboration-gates-foundation-develop
NYS and Gates Foundation Will Convene Experts to Answer Key Questions About What Education Should Look Like in the Future
Announces New Contest Asking New Yorkers to Create and Share a Video Explaining Why People Should Wear a Mask in Public; Interested New Yorkers Can Learn More at WearAMask.NY.Gov
Confirms 2,239 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 321,192; New Cases in 41 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that New York State is collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a blueprint to reimagine education in the new normal. As New York begins to develop plans to reopen K-12 schools and colleges, the state and the Gates Foundation will consider what education should look like in the future, including:
How can we use technology to provide more opportunities to students no matter where they are;
How can we provide shared education among schools and colleges using technology;
How can technology reduce educational inequality, including English as a new language students;
How can we use technology to meet educational needs of students with disabilities;
How can we provide educators more tools to use technology;
How can technology break down barriers to K-12 and Colleges and Universities to provide greater access to high quality education no matter where the student lives; and
Given ongoing socially distancing rules, how can we deploy classroom technology, like immersive cloud virtual classrooms learning, to recreate larger class or lecture hall environments in different locations?
The state will bring together a group of leaders to answer these questions in collaborationwith the Gates Foundation, who will support New York State by helping bring together national and international experts, as well as provide expert advice as needed.
Governor Cuomo also announced a new contest asking New Yorkers to create and share a video explaining why people should wear a mask in public. The winning video will be used as a Public Service Announcement. Videos should be less than 30 seconds long, should show a mask properly worn over the mouth and nose and must be submitted by May 30th. Interested New Yorkers can learn more at WearAMask.ny.gov.
The last few months have been an incredibly stressful time full of change, but we have to learn and grow from this situation and make sure we build our systems back better than they were before
Governor Cuomo
"The last few months have been an incredibly stressful time full of change, but we have to learn and grow from this situation and make sure we build our systems back better than they were before," Governor Cuomo said. "One of the areas we can really learn from is education because the old model of our education system where everyone sits in a classroom is not going to work in the new normal. When we do reopen our schools let's reimagine them for the future, and to do that we are collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and exploring smart, innovative education alternatives using all the new technology we have at our disposal."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,239 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 321,192 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 321,192 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,294
7
Allegany
35
0
Broome
338
4
Cattaraugus
53
0
Cayuga
51
0
Chautauqua
37
0
Chemung
126
0
Chenango
100
0
Clinton
69
1
Columbia
229
16
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
62
0
Dutchess
3,151
20
Erie
3,891
89
Essex
30
1
Franklin
16
0
Fulton
97
13
Genesee
159
0
Greene
166
12
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
67
4
Jefferson
63
0
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
86
1
Madison
223
6
Monroe
1,623
28
Montgomery
61
5
Nassau
37,152
187
Niagara
508
15
NYC
176,874
1,223
Oneida
574
24
Onondaga
1002
31
Ontario
97
1
Orange
9,144
129
Orleans
99
2
Oswego
68
1
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,031
5
Rensselaer
339
2
Rockland
12,144
49
Saratoga
368
1
Schenectady
537
2
Schoharie
45
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
46
1
St. Lawrence
178
0
Steuben
221
2
Suffolk
35,275
198
Sullivan
984
8
Tioga
92
2
Tompkins
129
0
Ulster
1,357
3
Warren
192
0
Washington
188
0
Wayne
78
2
Westchester
30,240
143
Wyoming
70
1
Yates
19
0
May 5, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Collaboration with Gates Foundation to Develop a Blueprint to Reimagine Education in the New Normal. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-19
NYS and Gates Foundation Will Convene Experts to Answer Key Questions AboutWhat Education Should Look Like in the Future
Announces New Contest Asking New Yorkers to Create and Share a Video Explaining Why People Should Wear a Mask in Public; Interested New Yorkers Can Learn More at WearAMask.NY.Gov
Confirms 2,239 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 321,192; New Cases in 41 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "There's also no doubt we're also going through a devastating and costly moment in history. It's costly on every level, number of lives lost, the economic impact, personal impact, substance abuse has gone up. Domestic violence has gone up. Mental health issues have gone up. So, we have paid a very high price for what we're going through, but the hope is that we learn from it and that we are the better for it. We endured the pain. Let's make sure we benefit from the gain."
Cuomo: "Let's take this experience and really learn how we can do differently and better with our education system in terms of technology and virtual education, et cetera. That's something we're actively working on through this process. It's not about just reopening schools. When we reopen schools, let's open a better school and let's open a smarter education system."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York State is collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a blueprint to reimagine education in the new normal. As New York begins to develop plans to reopen K-12 schools and colleges, the state and the Gates Foundation will consider what education should look like in the future, including:
How can we use technology to provide more opportunities to students no matter where they are;
How can we provide shared education among schools and colleges using technology;
How can technology reduce educational inequality, including English as a new language students;
How can we use technology to meet educational needs of students with disabilities;
How can we provide educators more tools to use technology;
How can technology break down barriers to K-12 and Colleges and Universities to provide greater access to high quality education no matter where the student lives; and
Given ongoing socially distancing rules, how can we deploy classroom technology, like immersive cloud virtual classrooms learning, to recreate larger class or lecture hall environments in different locations?
The state will bring together a group of leaders to answer these questions in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, who will support New York State by helping bring together national and international experts, as well as provide expert advice as needed.
Governor Cuomo also announced a new contest asking New Yorkers to create and share a video explaining why people should wear a mask in public. The winning video will be used as a Public Service Announcement. Videos should be less than 30 seconds long, should show a mask properly worn over the mouth and nose and must be submitted by May 30th. Interested New Yorkers can learn more at WearAMask.ny.gov.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Masks up. Good morning. It's a beautiful day in New York City, pleasure to be here. Let me introduce the people who are here. From my far left, Dr. Jim Malatras, who's been working with us for many years on the state side, now head of Empire State College. My daughter Mariah Kennedy Cuomo, one of three, no favorites. Her participation today will be clear in a couple of minutes. To my right, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor.
Let's give you some facts about where we are today. The number of total hospitalizations is 9,600. That is a lower number than yesterday, barely. It's basically flat. As I mentioned yesterday, the weekend reporting numbers tend to be a little erratic sometimes. We're not quite sure why this whole reporting mechanism has just been in place a couple months. The first time ever every hospital has reported every day to the state. But, it's better than going up. You see the overall total hospitalizations is down. Change in intubations is down, that's good news. And the number of new hospitalizations is also down. This is an important number. This is how many people came in yesterday, with a diagnosis of COVID, into hospitals, or people who were technically in a hospital who were then diagnosed with COVID. But again, Sunday is a different day operationally for hospitals. But again, the number's down. So it is good news.
This is always the worst number when we're going through the facts of the day, and it is not good news. Number of lives lost, 230, technically up from yesterday, even allowing for the Sunday reporting. But, it is painful, painful news for all New Yorkers, and we'll remember those families in our thoughts and prayers. There's no doubt that we're coming down the mountain. Only question is what trail we take, what path we take, coming down the mountain, how fast does that decline continue? Does the decline continue? And that is purely a function of what we do. None of this is preordained. None of this is decided by any factor other than our own behavior. You tell me how well New Yorkers socially comply with distancing, et cetera, and I'll tell you what that infection rate is doing. It's that simple. And everything we have done thus far has worked, and that's why the number is coming down, but you tell me what we do today and tomorrow, and I'll tell you the infection rate in the next few days.
What we've said from the beginning is the key is testing and tracing and isolating. It's very hard to do, it's easy to say. No one has ever done this before. We've never put this kind of testing regimen in place industrywide. We've never had a tracing operation that's anywhere near this magnitude. We've never done isolation, quarantine. That's never happened before. But, we do what we have to do and this is what we have to do to monitor the infection rate and to control it. And that's what we're doing. We laid out a very specific reopening plan yesterday. We studied all the state's plans, we've studied reopening plans of countries around the world, we incorporated all the best practices. I think we probably have the most specific plan for metrics and measuring to make these decisions. And it's basically a mathematical formula, if you look at that reopening plan. And I think that's the way we should do it and proceed. This is about following the data, learning the lessons, listening to the experts, following the science, and it's about being smart. Everybody's emotional, we're getting more emotional, there's more stress, there's more anxiety, there's more pressure on all of us. We want to get on with life, we want a paycheck, we want to make sure our job is there. But, still a time to be smart, right, we don't act emotionally, we act based on logic and fact and science, that's how we make policy. But we have to remind ourselves every day because the pressure is to just respond to the emotion.
And there's also no doubt we're also going through a devastating and costly moment in history. It's costly on every level, number of lives lost, the economic impact, personal impact, substance abuse has gone up. Domestic violence has gone up. Mental health issues have gone up. So, we have paid a very high price for what we're going through, but the hope is that we learn from it and that we are the better for it. We endured the pain. Let's make sure we benefit from the gain. This is also true, and people can understand this as a life lesson. You get as old as I am, you go through some tough periods in life. That's a fact. That is going to happen. You live life long enough, you will go through a difficult period. I've gone through more than my share. But you take those periods and you try to learn from them and you try to grow, right? That's the best you can do with it. What can you learn so when you move forward, you're the better for it. We do that as a society, also. That's the concept of build back better. We don't want to go through all of this and replace what was there before. Replacing what was there before is a starting point. We want to replace, but we want to improve. And we want to be better for this experience and we want to build back better.
We were smart enough to do that as a country, as a state after 9/11. We went through pain. We came back stronger. You could argue more united as a country, more united as a state, more aware of our vulnerabilities. And, yes, greatest country on the planet, great state in the nation, it's our opinion. But we were vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Okay, so we learned from it. We got stronger, we got better and we incorporated security into our life in a way that was unimaginable before 9/11. Hurricane Sandy, Superstorm Sandy, devastated thousands of lives, billions of dollars in damage. We built back, and we built back better than we were before. We didn't replace what was. We improved almost everything that we learned during that time. Our housing construction is different, our power grid is different, our infrastructure is different.
So, you go through these situations and you learn, and that's what we have to do here. We have to have a better public health system. We should never go through this again, what we went through with the hospitals, what we went through with PPE, staff shortages, that can never happen again. How we use telemedicine, we have to learn and we have to grow. It was vital to what we did here. We have to make sure we're better at it. Our public transportation system, we're learning. Tonight, we're going to shut down the subways for the first time in history. Why? Because they have to be disinfected. Whoever heard of disinfecting a subway car? Well, now you learn you have to disinfect subway cars, figure out how to do it so you can say to people who use the subways, "Don't worry, it's safe." That's a starting point for public transportation.
One of the areas we can really learn from is education. We've all been talking about tele-education, virtual education, remote education. And there's a lot that can be done. The old model of everybody goes and sits in the classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms. Why, with all the technology you have? We've been exploring different alternatives with technology, right. We have classrooms in this state that have technology where they're talking to students on Long Island with a teacher from Staten Island with students from around the world participating with technology, hearing that one teacher. If you look at the technology, it looks like all these different students are in one classroom. All right. Well, let's learn from that and let's learn from our experience.
We did a lot of remote learning. Frankly, we weren't prepared to do it. We didn't have advanced warning, but we did what we had to do and the teachers and the education system did a great job. But there's more we can do. We're still working on providing some students with the technology, with the tablets, et cetera. Some teachers needed training and they weren't ready for it. Let's take this experience and really learn how we can do differently and better with our education system in terms of technology and virtual education, et cetera. That's something we're actively working on through this process. It's not about just reopening schools. When we reopen schools, let's open a better school and let's open a smarter education system. I want to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We'll be working with them on this project. Bill Gates in a visionary in many ways and his ideas and thoughts on technology and education, he's spoken about it for years, but I think we now have a moment in history where we can actually incorporate and advance those ideas.
When does change come to a society? Because we all talk about change and advancement, but really we like control and we like the status quo. It's hard to change the status quo. You get moments in history where people say, "Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready for change." I get it. I think this is one of those moments. I think education, as well as other topics, is a topic where people will say, look I've been reflecting, I've been thinking, I learned a lot. We all learned a lot about how vulnerable we are and how much we have to do. Let's start talking about really revolutionizing education and it's about time.
One point I want to make about reopening, not just in this state, but all across this nation. There's a conversation that is going on about reopening that we are not necessarily explicit about, but which is very important. There's a question that is being debated right under the surface and the decisions we make on reopening are really profound decisions. The fundamental question which we're not articulating is how much is a human life worth? How much do we think a human life is worth? There's a cost of staying closed, no doubt. Economic cost, personal cost. There's also a cost of reopening quickly. Either option has a cost.
You stay closed, there's a cost. You reopen quickly and there's a cost. The faster we reopen, the lower the economic cost; but the higher the human cost because the more lives lost. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making. What is that balance? What is that trade off? Because it is very real. If you look at the projection models of how many lives will be lost, you'll notice they changed recently. Why did they change? And they went up dramatically. Why? Because now they're factoring in the reopening plans and the reopening schedules that states are announcing. The federal government's estimate, federal government's estimate, FEMA, has increased from 25,000 to 200,000 the number of daily cases by June.
Think about that increase. The IHME, which is a foundation model supported by Gates, which is the preferred model by the White House. When they were projecting deaths by August 4, they projected in early April, 60,000 deaths. They projected, mid-April, 60,300 deaths, actually a little lower. The new projections are 134,000 deaths. How did it go from 60,000 deaths to 134,000 deaths? This is the model which the White House relies on. When the director of the institute was asked why those revisions happened, the director said rising mobility in most US states as well as the easing of social distancing measures expected in 31 states by May 11th, indicating that growing contacts among people will promote transmission of the coronavirus. That's a very nice way of saying when you accelerate the reopening, you will have more people coming in contact with other people - you're relaxing social distancing. The more people in contact with other people, the higher the infection rate of the spread of the virus. The more people who get infected, the more people die. We know that. That's why the projection models are going up.
There's a cost of staying closed. There's also a cost of reopening quickly. That is the hard truth that we are all dealing with. Let's be honest about, let's be open about it. Let's not camouflage the actual terms of the discussion that we're having. The question comes back to how much is a human life worth? Do you see that projection model go from 25 to 200,000 cases from FEMA. You see the number of deaths go from 60,000 to 134,000. How much is a human life worth? That's the real discussion that no one is admitting openly or freely, but we should.
To me, I say cost of a human - a human life is priceless, period. Our reopening plan doesn't have a tradeoff. Our reopening plan says you monitor the data, you monitor the transmission rate, you monitor the hospitalization rate, you monitor the death rate. If it goes up, you have a "circuit breaker," you stop. You close the valve on reopening. But it is a conversation that we should have openly. Hard conversation, painful conversation, controversial conversation, yes, all of the above. But, it's also the right conversation because those are the decisions we're making.
Also, as we're going through this, it's important that our leadership be factual and productive and united because this is a time when government has to work. Government on all levels has to work. The federal government has to work and it has to work now better than it has worked in the past. You know, all the craziness that we've watched in Washington, all the politics that we've seen in Washington, all the dysfunction that we've seen in Washington. Now it is unacceptable because what government does today will literally determine how many people and how many die.
That's not hyperbolic, that's not overly dramatic, that is just a fact. That federal government has to be able to pass legislation. To pass legislation, it has to be on a bipartisan basis. You have the Congress, the House is controlled by Democrats. The Senate is controlled by Republicans. Unless you get a bipartisan agreement, you're not going to pass legislation. If you don't pass legislation, the federal government doesn't work. If the federal government doesn't work it makes it virtually impossible for state governments to work. If I can't work, then local governments can't work.
This is not something that a state can control - well the governors are in charge, the governors are in charge. I can only be in charge to the extent I have the resources and the means. That comes from the federal government. Not just for New York, but for every state in this country. So that federal government has to work and the legislation that they pass is important. They have to pass legislation. That only happens on a bipartisan basis. There is no choice. Well just the Democrats can do it, well just the Republicans can do it - they cannot.
It takes two to tango. It takes two Houses to pass a bill, and one is Democratic, and one is Republican. So the facts are important. The President gave an interview as reported in the New York Post. "Blue state coronavirus bailouts are unfair to republicans". Bailouts, this is the topic of whether or not the federal government should provide aid to state governments, and it's been a discussion for weeks. Federal government has passed legislation in the past that helped airlines, helped small businesses, helped hotels. Great. They haven't provided any aid to state and local governments. "Why is that important?" It's the state and local governments that fund police, fire, education, teachers, healthcareworkers. If you starve the states, how do you expect the states to be able to fund this entire reopening plan? "Well, the governors are in charge." But the states are in dire financial circumstances because our economy suffered when all of the businesses shut down.
So the debate is now is, "well, it's the blue states that have the coronavirus." New York they call a blue state. California they call a blue state. And the Republicans are saying we don't want to give money to the blue states. First of all, this is not a blue state issue. Every state has coronavirus cases, and it's not just Democratic states that have an economic shortfall. Republican states have an economic shortfall. "Well, its mismanagement of blue states for decades that they now want us to bail out." That is just not a fact. It's not a fact. First of all, no blue state was asking for a bailout before this coronavirus. I wasn't asking for anything from the government before the coronavirus. By the way, the government wasn't giving New York anything for years. Everything they were doing was negative to New York. Then comes the coronavirus, our economy stops because we shut it down. Now we have a $13 billion deficit because we stopped the economy. So, what we're asking, every state is asking, because of the coronavirus we need financial help to restart the economy, and that's what we're asking for from the federal government. How do you call that a bailout? Which is such a loaded word, such a rhetorical, hyperbolic word. "It's a bailout." There's no bailout. Because of the coronavirus this nation has been impacted, and states have been impacted, because the states make up the nation. And we need financial help because of the coronavirus situation. And this is not any mismanagement by the states.
If anything, the mismanagement has been on behalf of the federal government. And that's where the mismanagement has gone back decades. Senator Moynihan, God rest his soul, New York senator, a great man, said decades ago, that "New York has been continually short-changed by the federal government." Why? Because we have always given them more money than they gave us back, right? How does the federal government work? The federal government collects taxes and puts it all in a pot, and then takes money from that federal pot and gives it back to the states. Every year, New York State has put more money into that federal pot than the federal government has given back - every year for decades. And that is just a fact.
Also, you want to try to divide, divide, divide. The facts are if the Democratic states, which happen to have now high coronavirus content, which actually have put in more money than the Republican states who are now saying, why should we bail out the Democratic states? The democratic states have been supporting them for years. New York every year, $29 billion more paid in than it gets out. New Jersey, also a high coronavirus state. $18 billion more every year than it gives out. Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, and then you look at the Republicans who now say, well, we don't want to help the Democratic states. They're actually the states that have been taking more every year. Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky. Senator Mitch McConnell is Kentucky, $37 billion more every year. Alabama, Florida. Everything is about Florida. Why? Because it's a swing state and we're in an election year. I get it. Florida gets $30 billion more every year than it puts in. What are you talking about, fairness, equity, bailout?
You look at where we've been over the past five years - we paid in $116 billion more than we gave back. You want to be fair, just give New York back the money you took and it would be $116 billion. Who gives and who takes? We know those facts and we know the numbers. But, look, this whole discussion that Senator McConnell is raising, that some senators are raising, this is counterproductive and it will lead to defeat for all of us. You need a bipartisan bill to pass. You go down this path of partisanship and politics, you will never pass a bill. If you never pass legislation you will never get this economy back on its feet. So you go down this path of division, you will defeat all of us because we're all in the same boat. There is no separating us - still the United States of America. And this partisanship, we have to turn the page. I know it's how Washington operates. I know it'show Washington has been operating for many years. But we have to stop and we have to change and you do need a totally different mindset.
It can't be it's you versus me. It has to be we, right? We the people. If you don't get back to we and you think about a collective interest, you're going to defeat us all because it can't happen. And you have to get out of this Democrat or Republican, red or blue. It's not red or blue. It's red, white and blue. This coronavirus doesn't pick Democrats or Republicans. It doesn't kill Democrats or Republicans. It kills Americans. The virus is less scrutinizing and more of an equalizer than the lens we're viewing the virus through. And if we can't get past this now when can we ever get past it?
You have a national crisis. You have a national outbreak, a national epidemic killing thousands of people. You can't put your politics aside even now? Even today? Families have fights. Yes, families have fights. Somebody is going to die and the family is still going to carry forward these silly fights from years ago? Nobody even remembers how they started. If there's ever a time to come together, it's at a moment of crisis and this is a moment of crisis. And we always understood, and the great ones always told us that it won't work this way. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Do you want to be a leader? You want to go down in the history books as someone who stood up and did the right thing? Well then, remember what made us great in the first place, and that's what a great leader would do.
Also, last point, each of us must do our part. Talking about government, government, government. Yeah, government has a lot to do. I understand that fully. Citizens also have a role to play. You know who's going to keep yourself safe? You're going to keep yourself safe. You know who's going keep your family safe? You're going to keep your family safe. And you know who's going to keep each other safe? Each one of us keeps the other safe. Every person has a responsibility here, social responsibility and that's what wearing a mask is all about. Just wear a mask. It's the smart thing to do, it's also the right thing to do, right thing to do. In all of this complexity, there's still a right thing. You still know what's the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. Maybe right thing is a New York expression, I don't think so. You know what the right thing to do is. Nobody has to tell what you the right thing to do is. The right thing to do is to wear a mask. Because it's not about you. It's about my health. You wear a mask to protect me. I wear a mask to protect you. And wearing a mask is not the greatest intrusion.
I do not understand why people think it's such a burden to wear a mask and look, 99 percent of the people do it. It's the one percent of the people who don't do it, right, that's who we're talking about. We were talking about this last night and I was expressing my frustration why some people just don't get it. What this has been about from day one, this whole exercise, and where I started this on day one. All of these things we've done, nobody is doing these things because government told them do it, right. I'm the first governor in the history of the state of New York to say we're closing businesses, to say you must be quarantined. No governor has ever said that. How do I enforce that? I can't, I can't. How do you enforce making 19 million people stay at home? I can't. I said from day one, I can give the facts to New Yorkers, but then New Yorkers have to decide and agree that it makes sense given the facts and agree to do it, and New Yorkers have agreed to do it. All of these things, closing schools, closing businesses, staying home, socially distancing. So now wear a mask.
I was saying last night, I don't understand why this wear a mask is so hard. Mariah suggested it may be the way I'm communicating it. I'm just not effectively communicating. Don't laugh. Well first of all, this is a common refrain in my house from my daughters, thatit's me and my lack of ability to communicate effectively. That's a fair statement. And I am guilty, I have no doubt I am guilty. I am a bad communicator and that I haven't been communicating the rationale for wearing a mask effectively. So, I'm open minded, I understand my weaknesses and my flaws. I'm a work in progress. We're all a work in progress. I'm trying to get better.
So, Mariah's suggestion is look, why don't we ask New Yorkers to produce an ad that the state could run on explaining to New Yorkers why they should wear a mask. And the context and the rational and the health reasons and the social responsibility and it's not that big a deal. Maybe there's a better way to communicate it than I have been communicating it. Again, 99 percent of the people are doing it, and that's great. We're talking about that one percent. So, maybe I just haven't been persuasive or effective enough in my communication skills. So, I said to Mariah, great idea, we'll ask New Yorkers, produce an ad, 30-second ad, they submit it. Mariah's going to be an unofficial adviser with the Department of Health. Pick the five best, put them online, let New Yorkers pick the best ad, state will run that ad. It will say on the bottom, produced by whoever won the competition. They'll get a lot of acclaim. They'll go on to be big creative experts, and maybe we'll have an ad that communicates this better than I have been able to communicate it to date. So I'm excited about that, and Mariah is going to help on that and take it on as a project, and I'm excited about that, at no cost to the people of the State of New York, she will be a volunteer. The boyfriend can try to put in, he can submit a possible ad for consideration. The boyfriend will lose, but he could submit an ad, because I'm still governor, and that's what we're going to do. Mariah, do you want to add anything, or did I explain it clearly in my flawed communication modality?
Mariah Kennedy Cuomo: I think you covered it. We'll be providing more information in the next few days, but if you are interested you can go to WearAMask.NY.Gov.
Governor Cuomo: Melissa, anything else?
Melissa DeRosa: No, that's perfect.
Governor Cuomo: See, sometimes I communicate. Sometimes I communicate effectively. But you're not alone in criticizing my communication skills. Many of the people in this room would agree with you. And we are New York tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving.
May 5, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Extends Executive Order Allowing Out-of-State Health Care Professionals to Practice In New York State. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-extends-executive-order-allowing-out-state-health
"We are forever indebted to the countless doctors, nurses, physician assistants, respiratory therapists and other health care professionals from neighboring states who came to help the family of New York when we needed it most. They helped us get through the worst of this pandemic, and we will never forget their sacrifice. Today I am extending the executive order that allows these heroes to continue practicing in the Empire State, because although the apex is behind us, we continue to need their support. Words cannot express how grateful we are to them and all the frontline workers who are carrying us through this difficult period, but we will continue to try every single day."
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Schmidt Futures Will Help Integrate NYS Practices and Systems with Best Advanced Technology Tools to Build Back Better. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-schmidt-futures-will-help-integrate-nys
Eric Schmidt Will Lead 15-Member Commission and Use What the State Has Learned During COVID-19 Pandemic, Combined with New Technologies, to Improve Telehealth and Broadband Systems Across the State
Outlines Results of New Hospitalization Data to Further Reduce Number of New Hospitalizations per Day
JetBlue is Donating 100,000 Pairs of Round-Trip Flights for Medical Personnel and Nurses
Confirms 2,786 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 323,978; New Cases in 45 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that Schmidt Futures will help integrate New York State practices and systems with the best advanced technology tools to build back better. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and Executive Chairman and founder of Schmidt Futures, will lead the state's 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission and use what the state has learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with new technologies, to improve telehealth and broadband access.
The Governor also outlined the results of new hospitalization data that was collected from hospitals in a new targeted effort to further reduce the number of new hospitalizations per day. The state received 1,269 survey responses from 113 hospitals over three days and found that the majority of individuals were:
Not working or traveling;
Predominately located downstate;
Predominately minorities and older individuals;
Predominately non-essential employees; and
Predominately at home.
We're working with some of the nation's great business leaders to ensure we are thinking outside the box and improving and modernizing our systems for the future.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
The Governor also announced that JetBlue is donating 100,000 pairs of round-trip flights for medical personnel and nurses to honor their efforts, beginning with 10,000 pairs of tickets for New York medical professionals. Additionally, three painted JetBlue planes honoring New York's frontline workers will do a flyover above New York City on Thursday, May 7th, at 7:00 p.m.
"As we begin re-opening parts of the state and re-imagining New York in the new normal, we should take this moment in history to use what we've learned and actually build our systems back better," Governor Cuomo said. "I don't want to replace what we did - I want to set the bar higher and actually improve our situation so we are prepared for the future. We're working with some of the nation's great business leaders to ensure we are thinking outside the box and improving and modernizing our systems for the future."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,786 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 323,978 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 323,978 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,321
27
Allegany
35
0
Broome
345
7
Cattaraugus
54
1
Cayuga
51
0
Chautauqua
38
1
Chemung
128
2
Chenango
102
2
Clinton
69
0
Columbia
291
62
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
62
0
Dutchess
3,192
41
Erie
4,008
117
Essex
30
0
Franklin
16
0
Fulton
100
3
Genesee
162
3
Greene
188
22
Hamilton
5
2
Herkimer
68
1
Jefferson
63
0
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
89
3
Madison
231
8
Monroe
1,655
32
Montgomery
63
2
Nassau
37,350
198
Niagara
549
41
NYC
178,351
1,477
Oneida
579
5
Onondaga
1,056
54
Ontario
99
2
Orange
9,215
71
Orleans
103
4
Oswego
70
2
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,040
9
Rensselaer
347
8
Rockland
12,204
60
Saratoga
371
3
Schenectady
551
14
Schoharie
45
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
46
0
St. Lawrence
180
2
Steuben
223
2
Suffolk
35,543
268
Sullivan
996
12
Tioga
96
4
Tompkins
129
0
Ulster
1,383
26
Warren
193
1
Washington
189
1
Wayne
78
0
Westchester
30,426
186
Wyoming
70
0
Yates
19
0
May 6, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Schmidt Futures Will Help Integrate NYS Practices and Systems With Best Advanced Technology Tools to Build Back Better. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-20
Eric Schmidt Will Lead 15-Member Commission and Use What the State Has Learned During COVID-19 Pandemic, Combined with New Technologies, to Improve Telehealth and Broadband Systems Across the State
Outlines Results of New Hospitalization Data to Further Reduce Number of New Hospitalizations per Day
JetBlue is Donating 100,000 Pairs of Round-Trip Flights for Medical Personnel and Nurses
Confirms 2,786 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 323,978; New Cases in 45 Counties
Governor Cuomo: “We have to reopen the society. It's like asking when do you start breathing. You have to breathe. The economy must function. People need incomes. The economy has to work. The state needs revenues. People have to be able to live their lives. You have to be able to get out of the house. You have to be able to see friends. You have to be able to see family. It's not a question of do we reopen. It's a question of how we reopen. That's really the question that we have to grapple with and that we're dealing with in New York.”
Cuomo: “Nobody knows better than New Yorkers how our nurses really stepped up with our health care professionals. You know, when the pressure is on in our lives, you wind up seeing the best and the worst in people and heroes rise to the occasion, and that's what we saw here in the state of New York. Our frontline health care workers were just extraordinary. Showing up every day, working impossible hours, a virus that nobody understood, fear of infection, but they just kept rising to the occasion. And that's why New York and the nation just loves all of our health care workers, but our nurses especially have done a phenomenal job.”
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that Schmidt Futures will help integrate New York State practices and systems with the best advanced technology tools to build back better. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO and Executive Chairman and founder of Schmidt Futures, will lead the state's 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission and use what the state has learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with new technologies, to improve telehealth and broadband access.
The Governor also outlined the results of new hospitalization data that was collected from hospitals in a new targeted effort to further reduce the number of new hospitalizations per day. The state received 1,269 survey responses from 113 hospitals over three days and found that the majority of individuals were:
Not working or traveling;
Predominately located downstate;
Predominately minorities and older individuals;
Predominately non-essential employees; and
Predominately at home.
The Governor also announced that JetBlue is donating 100,000 pairs of round-trip flights for medical personnel and nurses to honor their efforts, beginning with 10,000 pairs of tickets for New York medical professionals. Additionally, three painted JetBlue planes honoring New York's frontline workers will do a flyover above New York City on Thursday, May 7th, at 7:00 p.m.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of today’s remarks is available below:
Governor Cuomo: Good morning. Pleasure to be with all of you. Pleasure to be back on Long Island. Let me introduce the participants we have here today. From my far left, Dr. Jim Malatras from Empire State College. To my immediate left, Michael Dowling, who needs no introduction in this facility, but Michael Dowling worked for 12 years with Governor Mario Cuomo, who I believe was the best governor to serve in the history of the State of New York, I may not be objective on that. 12 years with Mario Cuomo was a long 12 years, when you worked with my father. Those were dog years, when you worked with Mario Cuomo. So 12 years. Michael basically ran the healthcare system for the State of New York and developed the healthcare system during that time, then went and now runs Northwell health system, which is the largest hospital system, health system, in the state, and he’s been extraordinarily helpful here in dealing with this virus and he’s going to be even more helpful as we go forward. So a pleasure to be with him. To my right, Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor and to her right, Dr. Howard Zucker, as you all know, who’s our commissioner of health, who’s been doing a great job. Pleasure to be here today.
This is one of the most challenging times that this state has faced in modern history. Challenging time all across the nation. Lot of questions, lot of anxiety. Lot of opinions out there, everybody has an opinion, everybody has a, watch the news, talk to people, everyone has an opinion on what we should be doing. Everyone has thoughts they want to share. One of the things that makes it frustrating for my team, is I say, I’m interested in your opinion, I’m interested in your thoughts, but let's start with facts first, right. And then once we agree on facts, then we can get to opinions and thoughts and beliefs, but let's start with facts. And that's what I’ve been doing for the people of the State of New York.
Let me give you facts. Our total hospitalization rate is down again. You see this curve, we talked about it on the way up, which was a painful journey. We talked about it at the quote, unquote, apex, which turned into more of a plateau, a flattening. And now we're seeing it gradually decline. We would have liked to see a steeper, faster decline, but this is where we are and it's a painfully slow decline, but it's better than the numbers going the other way. You see it on total hospitalizations. You see it on intubations, and you see it also in the number of new cases per day. This is important because while we're seeing that hospitalization rate go down, and you see the number of new cases going down, those number of new cases are still problematic, right. So it means 600 new cases yesterday. With everything we've done, we still have 600 new cases yesterday, either walking in the door to hospitals or people who are in hospitals who were then diagnosed with COVID. But that number is also going down. One of the most stubborn situations and the most distressing are the number of deaths, and that is down from where we were, but it's still 232 yesterday which is an unimaginable and painful reality that we have to deal with. And when people talk about how good things are going and the decline and the progress, that's all true. It's also true that 232 people were lost yesterday and that's 232 families that are suffering today.
Also a caution in the number of deaths, I know the reporters and everyone likes to trace these numbers and document these numbers. I think we're going to find, when all is said and done, that the numbers are much different than we actually thought they were. The amount of information that is now coming out that changes what we believed or what we were told happens almost on a daily basis. This was a virus that started in China. Now, last week the CDC says oh, it doesn't come from China. It actually came from Europe to the east coast. That's how it got to New York and that's how it got to Chicago, et cetera. That by the time we turned off travel from China, the China travel ban, the virus was already gone. And it was in Europe and then it came here from Europe. We didn't know at the time. So February, March, flights were landing, people coming from Italy, the UK, et cetera. They were bringing the virus. We didn’t know. They're now saying that the virus may not have come just in February, March – the virus may have come late last year. They're doing testing in Chicago now on people who passed last November and December to see if they passed from the COVID virus. So I think this is all going to change over time. So a note of caution. I think it's going to be worse when the final numbers are tallied. We're also not fully documenting all the at-home deaths that may be attributable to COVID so I think the reality is going to be actually worse.
But there's no doubt it's a time of unprecedented anxiety, stress. People want answers. People want answers now. Haven't had a paycheck, they don't know where their job is. They don't know if they're going back to work, where they're going back to work, when they're going back to work, and they want answers now. I understand that fully.
But before we look for answers let's make sure we're all understanding the same question and the question here is not, do we open or reopen the society, when do we reopen? We have to reopen the society. It's like asking when do you start breathing. You have to breathe. The economy must function. People need incomes. The economy has to work. The state needs revenues. People have to be able to live their lives. You have to be able to get out of the house. You have to be able to see friends. You have to be able to see family.
It's not a question of do we reopen. It's a question of how we reopen. That's really the question that we have to grapple with and that we're dealing with in New York. Our position in New York is, the answer to the question how do we reopen is by following facts and data as opposed to emotion and politics. Everyone has emotion. I want to go back to work today. I want to go see my family today. I want to be able to go to a bar and have a couple of drinks and socialize with my friends today. It's not about emotion. It's not about political position on reopening. There's no Democratic position, Republican position. This virus kills Democrats and Republicans. There's no politics to this.
Deal with facts and deal with data and use that to instruct you – even more important at a time of high emotion. Understand the emotion. Appreciate the emotion but deal on the facts and the data. You have it. You can calibrate by the number of hospitalizations, the infection rate, the number of deaths, the percentage of hospital capacity, the percentage that you're finding on antibody tests, the percentage you're finding on diagnostic tests, positive, negative. You're collecting tracing data. Make your decisions based on the information and the data. That's what we're seeing in New York. That actually works.
By the way, we know it works. When you look - there's a chart today that was published by The New York Times - you look at what's happening in New York, yes, our line is going down. Our number of cases is going down. We have turned the corner and we're on the decline. You take New York out of the national numbers, the numbers for the rest of the nation are going up. They are going up. To me that vindicates what we're doing here in New York which says follow the science. Follow the data. Put the politics aside and the emotion aside.
What we're doing here shows results. The hospitalization rate is down. The number of deaths is down and the number of new cases is down. For me, I've been focusing on this number of new cases. That's where our health professionals are focused. Why? Because with everything we've done, closed schools, closed businesses, everybody shelter at home, all the precautions about wear a mask, wear gloves, et cetera. You still have 600 new cases that walked in the door yesterday. Week before that we still saw 1,000 new cases every day. Where are those new cases still coming from because we've done everything we can to close down. How are you still generating 600 new cases every day? Where are they coming from?
Again, let's look at the facts, let's look at the data, let's understand and see what we can do. What we've done over the past few days is we asked hospitals, look at just those new cases who are coming in. Yesterday, 600 new cases. Where are those people coming from and what can we learn from those people to further target and refine our strategy. When you look at where they're coming from, they're primarily coming from downstate New York, which is not surprising. Basically, equally distributed. Long Island is 18 percent, so that's a number that jumps out at you. Rockland, Westchester which is where we did have a problem, that's down to 11 percent. When you look at the racial breakdown of who's getting hospitalized, you see it's disproportionately minorities, disproportionately African-American and Latino. Again, in downstate New York.
Higher percentage male, 52 to 48, we don't know exactly why, but the virus doesn't discriminate generally. A very high percentage co-morbidities, which is what we've been talking about which we understand which is not a surprise. This is a surprise. Overwhelmingly, the people were at home where there's been a lot of speculation about this a lot of people again had opinions. A lot of people have been arguing where they come from and where we should be focusing, but if you notice, 18 percent of the people came from nursing homes. Less than 1 percent came from jail or prison, 2 percent came from the homeless population, 2 percent from other congregant facilities. But 66 percent of the people were at home. Which is shocking to us.
Disproportionately older, but by the way, older starts at 51-years-old. I'm a little sensitive on this point, but if older starts at 51-years-old, then that's a large number of us old folk in this state, in this country. That whole vulnerable population being old, well, old is now 51 and up, so think about that. Sixty to seventy, 20 percent. Seventy to eighty, 19 percent. But 51-years-old is old, okay. Then I am very old.
Transportation method, we thought maybe they were taking public transportation and we've taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home. Two percent of car services, nine percent driving their own vehicle. Only 4 percent were taking public transportation, 2 percent were walking. Eighty-four percent were at home. Literally. Were they working? No. They were retired or they were unemployed. Only 17 percent working. That says they're not working, they're not traveling, they're predominantly downstate, predominantly minority, predominantly older, predominantly non-essential employees and that's important. We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work, that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. That's not the case and they were predominantly at home.
Now that's only three days, that's just about 100 hospitals. One thousand people, but it reinforces what we've been saying, which is much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself. Everything is closed down. Government has done everything it could. Society has done everything it could. Now it's up to you. Are you wearing a mask? Are you doing the hand sanitizer? If you have younger people who are visiting you and may be out there and may be less diligent with the social distancing, are you staying away from older people? Older starting at 51, by the way. It comes down to personal behavior. This is not a group that we can target with this information. It's really about personal behavior.
Another issue that we're looking at, we're trying to understand, what is happening in these hot spot clusters that you see popping up? You see it happening across the country in meat plants where you have a significant number of people getting infected and there's now a meat shortage in the nation.
We have a hot spot in New York State, we have a hotspot in Upstate New York, Madison and Oneida counties. It's around an agricultural business, but it's not a meat processing plant. It's actually a greenhouse farm, and we have dozens of cases coming from the employees in this situation.
So, what does that tell you? It's not really about meat or vegetables. There's nothing about the fact that it was a meat processing plant because we have a vegetable processing plant. It is about worker density and large gatherings. That's the caution flag here. That's the message. It's not about poultry. It's not about meat. It's not about vegetables. It's when you run a facility with a large number of workers in a dense environment. We learned that already in New York when we had the New Rochelle hotspot, which was the first hotspot in the nation, New Rochelle, Westchester, and the lesson was one or two people infected who go to a large gathering or a dense gathering, that virus just takes off on you. And we learn that in New Rochelle, we’re learning it again in meat processing plants and poultry processing plants across the nation, and we just went through it again and we're going through it now in Madison and Oneida county. So that’s something that we have to watch that and keep that in mind.
Also, at the same time we're going through this reopening exercise, I want to make sure we don't miss the opportunity in the moment. The opportunity in the moment is that we went all through this, so let's learn the lessons and let's take this moment in history to actually improve from where we are and build it back better. I want to set the bar high and set the goal of not just replacing what we did. “Okay, everybody go back to where we were.” I don't want to say we spent all of this time, all of this pain, all of this suffering, lost all of these deaths only to go back to where we were, go back to a better place. How do you take -- how do you find the silver lining in this viral storm and actually improve your situation? We're on Long Island. We went through Superstorm Sandy. It was horrendous. Thousands of people displaced, but we learned and we built back better. Long Island is better for having gone through Hurricane Sandy. “How can you say that?” Because it's a fact. We learned; we improved from a horrendous situation. How do we do that here? And that's part of what we want to do.
People talk about making changes in society. Change is very hard to make. Change is hard in your own personal life, right? How many New Year's resolutions did we make as a society that are still in effect here in May, right? “I was supposed to lose five pounds. I was supposed to be running every day. I was supposed to never lose my temper.” Forget it. One week – maybe ten days for the temper. But history does show that people are ready for change at certain moments, and I believe this is one of those moments. Like a Superstorm Sandy, like a 9/11, like we've seen from natural disasters around the country where people say, “I get it and I’m ready to make changes.” That's what we want to do. That's what we talk about when we say look, it's not just about reopening. It's about rebuilding, it's literally about reimagining and moving this day forward at this moment. And we want to do that. How do we come up with a better transportation system? How do we have more social equity in society, better safety system, better housing, better economy, better education, better healthcare system? And we need the best minds available to take this moment to put together with the best thinking that we can find to make the best improvement.
One of the lessons is in public health and our hospital system, we worked in an impossible situation when this started. We were told that we may need 130,000 hospital beds for COVID. That was the initial projections. We only have 50,000 hospital beds in state. How do you get 50,000 hospital beds to a 130,000 capacity? It was impossible. And by the way, we don't really have a public health system. We have separate hospitals all across the state. But they don't really function as one system. They never work together on a day to day basis, they don’t share patient load, they don’t share PPE. How do you do that? And we scrambled and we made it work, but now how do we institutionalize that and how are we ready for the next COVID or the next whatever it is? How do we use telemedicine better? How do we better allocate our health resources? How do we harden the healthcare system? But let’s take the lessons we just learned and institutionalize it. We’ve asked Michael Dowling to do that. He was a big part of the scramble that we went through to make it work and Northwell was a leader – it’s the largest and the, in my opinion, most innovative. But now how do we take that and institutionalize it so we don’t have to go through this again? So next time something like this happens we can just open a book and it says here’s what we do, step A, step B, step C. We want to thank Michael for his service with that. He’ll be working with Dr. Zucker from the Department of Health.
Another area is education. We went to remote learning overnight. That’s what happens when you close the schools. Okay, all the students go home, we’re going to go to remote learning. Well, what is remote learning? We weren’t really ready for it. We had all talked about it, thought about it, but we were not really prepared to do it. We then had to do it. We implemented it and God bless the teachers in this state, they did a phenomenal job. God bless parents who had to figure out quickly how to use computers and technology and Zoom this and Zoom that. But, how do we really learn those lessons? We went to Bill Gates and he’s going to work with us on reimagining the education system. I want to thank him very much.
How do you create a testing and tracing system? By the way, what is a testing and tracing system? We’ve never done this before. We have to take thousands of COVID tests, antibody tests, diagnostic tests, and then we have to trace – have an army of tracers to do this. We’re doing this for the first time ever. How do we learn and institutionalize it? Yes, we have to do this for COVID, but we’re not going to go through this trouble and then just forget it. This will happen again – some people say this virus comes back in the fall or the winter. Or there’ll be another health emergency. But Michael Bloomberg has generously said he would work with us and use his philanthropy to develop that testing and tracing.
Then, on a larger scale, how do we really use new technology in the economy of tomorrow? That’s the lesson that we’re all learning, right? Work from home, telemedicine, tele-education, it’s all about technology and a better use of technology and really incorporating the lessons into that. The best mind in this country, if not on the globe, to do this is, I believe, a true visionary, especially in the field of technology and that’s Eric Schmidt who was former CEO of Google, obviously. He saw a future that no one else envisioned and then developed a way to get there. We’ve asked him to come work with us to bring that kind of visionary aspect to government and society. Let’s look at what we just went through. Let’s anticipate a future through that lens and tell us how we can incorporate these lessons. Mr. Schmidt, who has tremendous demands on his talent and his time, has agreed to help and head an effort to do this. Eric, thank you so much for doing this and thank you so much for being with us.
Eric Schmidt: Thank you, Governor. You have been doing an incredible job for our state and, frankly, for our nation and I’m really pleased to help.
The first priorities of what we’re trying to do are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband. We can take this terrible disaster and accelerate all of those in ways that will make things much, much better. The solutions that we have to come up with have to help the people most in need. People are in different situations throughout the state. We need to consider all of them and not pick one or the other. The intent is to be very inclusive and make this thing better.
We need to look for solutions that can be presented now and accelerated and use technology to make things better. My own view is that these moments are a chance to revisit things that are not getting enough attention. We have systems that need to be updating and need to be reviewed.
My commitment is to make this period, this sort of awful, to be a period that you described in Long Island where New York State, New York City, everyone comes out stronger. The public private partnerships that are possible with the intelligence of the New Yorkers is extraordinary. It needs to be unleashed.
Governor Cuomo: You are the person to help us do that. We are all ready. We're all in. We're New Yorkers, so we're aggressive about it and we're ambitious about it, and I think we get it, Eric. You know, we went through this period and we realized that change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend if done the right way. I hope that when we look back on this time, we talk about all the pain, all of the suffering, but we also say it was a moment in time where we came together and we brought a creative aspect and innovative aspect and we worked together in ways we never did before. And we made this place a better place. And I can't thank you enough for doing it. Eric, thank you very much. I look forward to continuing the conversation and working together. Mr. Schmidt, thank you.
Eric Schmidt: Thank you, Governor.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you. That is exciting.
Last point, today is National Nurses Day. As you know, nobody knows better than New Yorkers how our nurses really stepped up with our health care professionals. You know, when the pressure is on in our lives, you wind up seeing the best and the worst in people and heroes rise to the occasion, and that's what we saw here in the state of New York. Our frontline health care workers were just extraordinary. Showing up every day, working impossible hours, a virus that nobody understood, fear of infection, but they just kept rising to the occasion. And that's why New York and the nation just loves all of our health care workers, but our nurses especially have done a phenomenal job. And we thank them from the bottom of our hearts. And JetBlue had a beautiful idea of a way to say thank you, which is donating round trip flights to had 100,000 medical personnel and nurses to honor their efforts. Isn't that a beautiful thing? 10,000 to New York medical professionals. Michael Dowling is not eligible for that situation, but other than that because we need him here in New York. But it's a nice way that JetBlue is saying thank you. All of us will find our own way to say thank you, but I'm sure every New Yorker joins me in saying thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our heart. To all of the nurses who are here today, god bless you and thank you for getting us through this. And thank you for being New York tough, which is not just tough, but smart, and disciplined, and unified, and loving. God bless you.
May 7, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Moratorium on COVID-Related Evictions Will Be Extended Until August 20th. Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Moratorium on COVID-Related Evictions Will Be Extended Until August 20th
State is Banning Late Payments or Fees for missed Rent Payments During Eviction Moratorium and Allowing Renters Facing Financial Hardship to Use Security Deposit as Payment
$25 Million Nourish New York Initiative Has Helped Nearly 50 Food Banks, More Than 2,100 New York Farms and More Than 20,000 Households Across the State
Results of State's Antibody Testing Survey of Health Care Workers Show Infection Rate Among Health Care Workers is About the Same or Lower Than General Population
Confirms 3,491 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 327,469; New Cases in 47 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the state's moratorium on COVID-related residential or commercial evictions will be extended for an additional 60 days until August 20th. The Governor also announced the state is banning late payments or fees for missed rent payments during the eviction moratorium, and allowing renters facing financial hardship due to COVID-19 to use their security deposit as payment and repay their security deposit over time.
Governor Cuomo also announced the state's $25 million Nourish New York Initiative has purchased food and products from more than 2,100 New York farms and provided support to nearly 50 food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries to date. Within the next week, more than 20,000 households across the state will receive Nourish New York products. First announced by the Governor on April 27th, the Nourish New York Initiative provides relief by purchasing food and products from Upstate farms and directs them to the populations who need them most through New York's network of food banks. The state is also asking any philanthropies or foundations that would like to help the state's food banks to contact COVIDPhilanthropies@exec.ny.gov.
The Governor also announced the results of state's antibody testing survey of health care workers. The survey tested approximately 27,000 employees from 25 downstate health care facilities and found that the infection rate among health care workers is about the same or lower than the infection rate of the general population.
6.8 percent of health care workers in Westchester County tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 13.8 percent of the general population in Westchester County
12.2 percent of health care workers in New York City tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City
11.1 percent of health care workers on Long Island tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 11.4 percent of the general population on Long Island
During these incredibly difficult and stressful times we must protect New Yorkers who are facing financial hardships due to COVID-19.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
"During these incredibly difficult and stressful times we must protect New Yorkers who are facing financial hardships due to COVID-19," Governor Cuomo said. "The majority of people in the state live paycheck to paycheck, and all of a sudden the paychecks have stopped for these individuals but the rent bill keeps coming in. In March we issued a moratorium on all residential and commercial evictions, and we are going to extend that moratorium until August 20th to provide some relief to those New Yorkers who are struggling."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 3,491 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 327,469 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 327,469 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,348
27
Allegany
35
0
Broome
360
15
Cattaraugus
59
5
Cayuga
52
1
Chautauqua
40
2
Chemung
129
1
Chenango
105
3
Clinton
69
0
Columbia
302
11
Cortland
29
1
Delaware
63
1
Dutchess
3,233
41
Erie
4,136
128
Essex
30
0
Franklin
16
0
Fulton
101
1
Genesee
168
6
Greene
198
10
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
74
6
Jefferson
64
1
Lewis
10
1
Livingston
95
6
Madison
246
15
Monroe
1,688
33
Montgomery
63
0
Nassau
37,593
243
Niagara
588
39
NYC
180,216
1,865
Oneida
609
30
Onondaga
1,115
59
Ontario
101
2
Orange
9,328
113
Orleans
108
5
Oswego
70
0
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,066
26
Rensselaer
367
20
Rockland
12,280
76
Saratoga
374
3
Schenectady
551
0
Schoharie
45
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
46
0
St. Lawrence
181
1
Steuben
224
1
Suffolk
35,892
349
Sullivan
1,021
25
Tioga
97
1
Tompkins
130
1
Ulster
1,416
33
Warren
193
0
Washington
190
1
Wayne
78
0
Westchester
30,708
282
Wyoming
71
1
Yates
19
0
May 7, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Moratorium on COVID-Related Evictions Will Be Extended Until August 20th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-21
State is Banning Late Payments or Fees for missed Rent Payments During Eviction Moratorium and Allowing Renters Facing Financial Hardship to Use Security Deposit as Payment
$25 Million Nourish New York Initiative Has Helped Nearly 50 Food Banks, More Than 2,100 New York Farms and More Than 20,000 Households Across the State
Results of State's Antibody Testing Survey of Health Care Workers Show Infection Rate Among Health Care Workers is About the Same or Lower Than General Population
Confirms 3,491 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 327,469; New Cases in 47 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "People literally are worried about being able to pay rent. You don't work for two months and that rent bill keeps coming in. You know it's not that the bill payers, the bill collectors have taken a vacation, bill collectors work right, they still send the bill and you still get collection notices. We did by executive order that I issued a moratorium on residential or commercial evictions, you cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent related to this COVID situation and that went through June. So, nobody has been and nobody can be evicted through June, either residential or commercial."
Cuomo: "We're going to take additional steps of banning any late payment fees because a person couldn't pay the rent during this period of time. Also, allowing people to use the security deposit as a payment and they can repay it over a prolonged period of time. But also I'm going to extend that moratorium an additional 60 days. It has an expired in June, but people are anxious and June for many people is just next month and the rent bill is going to come due. So, we're going to extend that 60 days until August 20. So, no one can be evicted for nonpayment of rent, residents or commercial because of COVID until August 20."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the state's moratorium on COVID-related residential or commercial evictions will be extended for an additional 60 days until August 20th. The Governor also announced the state is banning late payments or fees for missed rent payments during the eviction moratorium, and allowing renters facing financial hardship due to COVID-19 to use their security deposit as payment and repay their security deposit over time.
Governor Cuomo also announced the state's $25 million Nourish New York Initiative has purchased food and products from more than 2,100 New York farms and provided support to nearly 50 food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries to date. Within the next week, more than 20,000 households across the state will receive Nourish New York products. First announced by the Governor on April 27th, the Nourish New York Initiative provides relief by purchasing food and products from Upstate farms and directs them to the populations who need them most through New York's network of food banks. The state is also asking any philanthropies or foundations that would like to help the state's food banks to contact COVIDPhilanthropies@exec.ny.gov.
The Governor also announced the results of state's antibody testing survey of health care workers. The survey tested approximately 27,000 employees from 25 downstate health care facilities and found that the infection rate among health care workers is about the same or lower than the infection rate of the general population.
6.8 percent of health care workers in Westchester County tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 13.8 percent of the general population in Westchester County
12.2 percent of health care workers in New York City tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City
11.1 percent of health care workers on Long Island tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 11.4 percent of the general population on Long Island
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning, pleasure to be here. Thank you all for being here - appropriately socially distanced I see. It is a pleasure to be at the New York Medical College today. Thank you, Dr. Kadish for having us. Westchester County, great County Executive George Latimer. Also home to our great Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
And it is a beautiful day. It is so beautiful. I am going to go home after this, take the motorcycle out, and go for a ride. I'm going to wear my mask on the motorcycle, protects from COVID virus, also keeps bugs out of your mouth - works on both fronts. It is time of high anxiety. I understand that, a lot of pressure all across the country. But even more at times of high anxiety, it's important that we stay with the facts and the truth. John Adams, was defending the British at a time when the American people hated the British, "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Lincoln, big believer in the American people always, "Let them know the truth and the country is safe." I love Lincoln and the wisdom and the economy of his language. Let them know the truth and the country is safe.
Here are the facts where we are right now. 8,600 total hospitalizations, that number is down. That is good news and it's a fairly significant drop. So, that is good news. The net change in hospitalizations you see is also down. That's good news. Intubations is down. That's good news. The three-day rolling average of hospitalizations is also down. You see, you see the curve, you see the outline of what we went through, you see how fast it went up. Reminds you how fast the infection rate can spread. Look at how fast those numbers went up. And you see how once those numbers are up, how slow, how long it takes to get them down, right? We are on the down side of the mountain. Down side of the mountain is a much more gentle slope then what we went through going up the mountain. We wish it was a steeper decline but it's not. This is the worst number every day is the number of deaths, 231. And you can see how slow that has come down and how painfully high it still is. This is a chart of the number of lives lost. And again, you can see how fast that infection took off and how many lives we lost. And once that infection rate is high and people are getting infected, you can see how long it takes to slow it down and reduce the number of deaths. And they're coming down at painful, slow level of decline.
The top priority for us, one of the top priorities for us, has been protecting our frontline and our essential workers. You have to remember what happened here. It all happened so fast that it's almost hard to gain perspective on it. But the frontline workers, they showed up and went to work and put their lives in danger so everyone else could stay home. I laid out the facts as Lincoln said to the people of this state, laid out how dangerous this virus was, advocated in argued based on those facts that we needed to close down, close down schools, close down businesses, stayed home. People did that. In the next breath I said and by the way we need you essential workers to go to work tomorrow after just having explained how dangerous the virus was to justify shutting down society in a way that had never been shut down before. Next a breath, essential workers, I need you to go to work. Hospital care, I need you to go to work and help people who come in with the COVID virus after we just discussed how dangerous the COVID virus was and how little we knew about the virus.
Look at the courage that those frontline workers had to show. I mean it is still amazing to me and I just want to make sure on a human level we're doing everything that we can for them. So we've been aggressively testing the frontline workers to find out who needs help, how many people actually have been infected and we've been working with the police and transit workers and health care workers.
We tested 25 downstate health care facilities. Downstate New York is where the predominance of the virus was, over 27,000 employees, so it's it a very large sample. What we found out is really good news and one of the few positives that I've heard in a long time. When you look at the percentage of people who have the antibodies - which means they were infected at sometime in the past and they're now recovered - of the health care workers, in Westchester, 6.8, New York City 12.2, Long Island 11.1. That is about the same or lower than the infection rate among the general population. So Westchester, the infection rate among the general population is 13.8, almost 14. Westchester health care workers it's about half of the rate of the general population. I mean that is amazingly good news. We were afraid of what was going to happen and the health care workers actually are at about the same or lower than the general population in that area.
So that makes two points to me. Number one, our health care workers must be protected. They must have the PPE. We've been saying that all along. There was a mad scramble this last time to get the PPE. Internationally it was a mad scramble for all of us. That can never happen again. We have to have the PPE. We have to have the stockpiles. We did an order that said every hospital has to happen 90-day supply of PPE at the COVID rate of usage so we'll never go through this again but it also shows everybody how important the masks and the gloves and the sanitizer are and that they work. You know, it's not that the frontline workers get anything especially more sophisticated than the masks that people wear, the N95 masks. You know, they wear a gown, they wear a mask, they wear gloves, but they follow protocol and those masks work. They work. If they're working for front-line workers, they're going to work for people in their day to day lives and the precautions of gloves and sanitizing, they work.
Also, during this time it's important that we protect New Yorkers who are facing financial hardships. You have people who live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of people in this state live paycheck to paycheck. All the sudden the paycheck stops. Federal government issued a one-time payment of $600 unemployment benefits, but it's not making up the gap for many, many families. And they are struggling and we want to make sure we're doing everything we can. We have a problem in upstate New York where many of the farms can't sell their product. You had a lot of farms that were literally just dumping milk that the dairy farms had produced. But at the same time, you have people in downstate New York who are going hungry and can't buy, can't pay for enough food. Tremendous demand on food banks, so we've been putting the two together. It makes no sense to have upstate farmers who can't sell their product and downstate families that can't get enough to eat. So, we have been funding efforts to connect the farmers to the downstate food banks and we've done that with about $25 million to what we call our Nourish New York initiative. And that has worked, we're funding about 50 food banks that have 2,100 farms that are delivering food to those food banks. And about 20,000 households in the state are participating in that. The volume of food and product that is not being wasted that is supporting upstate farms and helping downstate families is tremendous. We want to continue doing that. The state budget is very, very tight right now with what's going on with the economy. So, philanthropies, foundations, there are a lot of people who want to help. This is a great cause and I would suggest that they help, so we can do even more.
People literally are worried about being able to pay rent. You don't work for two months and that rent bill keeps coming in. You know it's not that the bill payers, the bill collectors have taken a vacation, bill collectors work right, they still send the bill and you still get collection notices. We did by executive order that I issued a moratorium on residential or commercial evictions, you cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent related to this COVID situation and that went through June. So, nobody has been and nobody can be evicted through June, either residential or commercial.
We're going to take additional steps of banning any late payment fees because a person couldn't pay the rent during this period of time. Also, allowing people to use the security deposit as a payment and they can repay it over a prolonged period of time. But also I'm going to extend that moratorium an additional 60 days. It has an expired in June, but people are anxious and June for many people is just next month and the rent bill is going to come due. So, we're going to extend that 60 days until August 20. So, no one can be evicted for nonpayment of rent, residents or commercial because of COVID until August 20. Then, we'll see what happens between now and then. Nobody can really tell you what the future is so that will be in place. I hope it gives families a deep breath. Nothing can happen until August 20 and then we'll figure out between now and August 20 what the situation is.
Also, at this time, principles matter. I understand the anxiety. I understand the stress, but let's remember who we are what we're all about and what principles matter to us. People are talking about reopening the economy, it's more important than public health or public health is more important than the economy and that's the underlying argument in the discussion that you're hearing going on right now. To me, it's never been a question of whether or not we reopen. It's not reopen or not reopen, you have to reopen, you don't have a choice. It's how you reopen. it's how you reopen. To say well, we either have to have a strong economy or protect public health, no that's a false choice.
It's not one or the other, it's both. We have to reopen, get the economy running and we have to protect public health. This is not a situation where you can go to the American people and say, "how many lives are you willing to lose to reopen the economy?" We don't want to lose any lives. You start to hear these what are, to me, absurd arguments. Well yes, if we reopen people will die, but people were going to die anyway. Look, we are all going to die at one point the big question is when or how. The when and how matters. I understand that I am going to die. I just don't want to die now or next week and I don't want to die because I contracted the COVID virus unnecessarily. So, people are going to die. Yes, we are all going to die. That is not a justification in my mind.
it would be a novel defense. Person before a judge, charged with murder. Did you have a gun? Yes. Did you fire the gun? Yes. Did you shoot the person? Yes. Did the person die? Yes, but the person was going to die anyway. Yeah, I know, but it was the gun that killed the person and the bullet and you fired the gun. To go down this road - well, there are old people who will die. Predominantly, on the numbers. By the way, old - how do you define old - not that old is a justification, but we looked at the numbers yesterday the number of new cases coming in to hospitals. Fifty-one-years-old is where the increase starts, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80 is the highest. But 51-60, so 51 is not really old. I know that it's all relative and since I am beyond that 51, it's easy for me to say. But I don't really see 51 as old when we start talking about the old people.
I also think, and I do this for myself, any leader who makes a decision in this situation should be willing to participate in anything they authorize. So there is nothing that we are going to authorize or allow in this state that I, myself, will not be part of. You know, it's too easy to say, "Okay, you can go do this, but I'm going to protect myself and I'm going to stay behind the glass wall." No. If all human life has the same value, if I say something is safe for New Yorkers then I will participate in it because if it's safe for you, it's safe for me, right? That should be our standard going forward.
What we've been doing in New York is look - make the decisions based on facts and data not emotion and politics. I understand the emotion and I understand the anxiety and the stress. I understand politics a little bit. But, that's not the basis for making a decision. Every leader has told us that in different ways. That was John Adams, that was Lincoln, that was FDR, that was Teddy Roosevelt. When my team comes to me and says, "Oh boy, we had a new prison break. There's a flood coming. There's a hurricane. Ebola virus and the air is on fire." Slow down, deep breath. Let's look at the facts, let's understand the situation, and let's take action based on the facts. That is the way to lead, that's the way, I believe, to lead one's life.
Here we have a lot of information. We have a lot of facts. We know the hospitalization rate, we know the infection rate, we know the number of deaths, we're taking antibody tests, we're taking diagnostic tests, we're doing tracing. Make your decisions based on the facts and the data. It sounds simple and basic, but it's more important now than ever before.
And it is working for us. It is working. That's not just me saying that because I'm the governor. You look at what's happening in New York and look at what's happening in the rest of the nation. In New York, the number is coming down. It's coming down dramatically. You take New York out of the rest of the nation's numbers - the rest of the nation is going up and we're coming down.
So, what we're doing is working and when it's working, stay the course. Quote attributed to Winston Churchill, "If you're going through hell, keep going." And that's what we're doing. We're going through hell, but what we're doing is working so we're going to keep going. Because we are New York tough, smart, disciplined, united, and loving.
May 7, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Moratorium on COVID-Related Evictions Will Be Extended Until August 20th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-21
State is Banning Late Payments or Fees for missed Rent Payments During Eviction Moratorium and Allowing Renters Facing Financial Hardship to Use Security Deposit as Payment
$25 Million Nourish New York Initiative Has Helped Nearly 50 Food Banks, More Than 2,100 New York Farms and More Than 20,000 Households Across the State
Results of State's Antibody Testing Survey of Health Care Workers Show Infection Rate Among Health Care Workers is About the Same or Lower Than General Population
Confirms 3,491 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 327,469; New Cases in 47 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "People literally are worried about being able to pay rent. You don't work for two months and that rent bill keeps coming in. You know it's not that the bill payers, the bill collectors have taken a vacation, bill collectors work right, they still send the bill and you still get collection notices. We did by executive order that I issued a moratorium on residential or commercial evictions, you cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent related to this COVID situation and that went through June. So, nobody has been and nobody can be evicted through June, either residential or commercial."
Cuomo: "We're going to take additional steps of banning any late payment fees because a person couldn't pay the rent during this period of time. Also, allowing people to use the security deposit as a payment and they can repay it over a prolonged period of time. But also I'm going to extend that moratorium an additional 60 days. It has an expired in June, but people are anxious and June for many people is just next month and the rent bill is going to come due. So, we're going to extend that 60 days until August 20. So, no one can be evicted for nonpayment of rent, residents or commercial because of COVID until August 20."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the state's moratorium on COVID-related residential or commercial evictions will be extended for an additional 60 days until August 20th. The Governor also announced the state is banning late payments or fees for missed rent payments during the eviction moratorium, and allowing renters facing financial hardship due to COVID-19 to use their security deposit as payment and repay their security deposit over time.
Governor Cuomo also announced the state's $25 million Nourish New York Initiative has purchased food and products from more than 2,100 New York farms and provided support to nearly 50 food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries to date. Within the next week, more than 20,000 households across the state will receive Nourish New York products. First announced by the Governor on April 27th, the Nourish New York Initiative provides relief by purchasing food and products from Upstate farms and directs them to the populations who need them most through New York's network of food banks. The state is also asking any philanthropies or foundations that would like to help the state's food banks to contact COVIDPhilanthropies@exec.ny.gov.
The Governor also announced the results of state's antibody testing survey of health care workers. The survey tested approximately 27,000 employees from 25 downstate health care facilities and found that the infection rate among health care workers is about the same or lower than the infection rate of the general population.
6.8 percent of health care workers in Westchester County tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 13.8 percent of the general population in Westchester County
12.2 percent of health care workers in New York City tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City
11.1 percent of health care workers on Long Island tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 11.4 percent of the general population on Long Island
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning, pleasure to be here. Thank you all for being here - appropriately socially distanced I see. It is a pleasure to be at the New York Medical College today. Thank you, Dr. Kadish for having us. Westchester County, great County Executive George Latimer. Also home to our great Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
And it is a beautiful day. It is so beautiful. I am going to go home after this, take the motorcycle out, and go for a ride. I'm going to wear my mask on the motorcycle, protects from COVID virus, also keeps bugs out of your mouth - works on both fronts. It is time of high anxiety. I understand that, a lot of pressure all across the country. But even more at times of high anxiety, it's important that we stay with the facts and the truth. John Adams, was defending the British at a time when the American people hated the British, "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Lincoln, big believer in the American people always, "Let them know the truth and the country is safe." I love Lincoln and the wisdom and the economy of his language. Let them know the truth and the country is safe.
Here are the facts where we are right now. 8,600 total hospitalizations, that number is down. That is good news and it's a fairly significant drop. So, that is good news. The net change in hospitalizations you see is also down. That's good news. Intubations is down. That's good news. The three-day rolling average of hospitalizations is also down. You see, you see the curve, you see the outline of what we went through, you see how fast it went up. Reminds you how fast the infection rate can spread. Look at how fast those numbers went up. And you see how once those numbers are up, how slow, how long it takes to get them down, right? We are on the down side of the mountain. Down side of the mountain is a much more gentle slope then what we went through going up the mountain. We wish it was a steeper decline but it's not. This is the worst number every day is the number of deaths, 231. And you can see how slow that has come down and how painfully high it still is. This is a chart of the number of lives lost. And again, you can see how fast that infection took off and how many lives we lost. And once that infection rate is high and people are getting infected, you can see how long it takes to slow it down and reduce the number of deaths. And they're coming down at painful, slow level of decline.
The top priority for us, one of the top priorities for us, has been protecting our frontline and our essential workers. You have to remember what happened here. It all happened so fast that it's almost hard to gain perspective on it. But the frontline workers, they showed up and went to work and put their lives in danger so everyone else could stay home. I laid out the facts as Lincoln said to the people of this state, laid out how dangerous this virus was, advocated in argued based on those facts that we needed to close down, close down schools, close down businesses, stayed home. People did that. In the next breath I said and by the way we need you essential workers to go to work tomorrow after just having explained how dangerous the virus was to justify shutting down society in a way that had never been shut down before. Next a breath, essential workers, I need you to go to work. Hospital care, I need you to go to work and help people who come in with the COVID virus after we just discussed how dangerous the COVID virus was and how little we knew about the virus.
Look at the courage that those frontline workers had to show. I mean it is still amazing to me and I just want to make sure on a human level we're doing everything that we can for them. So we've been aggressively testing the frontline workers to find out who needs help, how many people actually have been infected and we've been working with the police and transit workers and health care workers.
We tested 25 downstate health care facilities. Downstate New York is where the predominance of the virus was, over 27,000 employees, so it's it a very large sample. What we found out is really good news and one of the few positives that I've heard in a long time. When you look at the percentage of people who have the antibodies - which means they were infected at sometime in the past and they're now recovered - of the health care workers, in Westchester, 6.8, New York City 12.2, Long Island 11.1. That is about the same or lower than the infection rate among the general population. So Westchester, the infection rate among the general population is 13.8, almost 14. Westchester health care workers it's about half of the rate of the general population. I mean that is amazingly good news. We were afraid of what was going to happen and the health care workers actually are at about the same or lower than the general population in that area.
So that makes two points to me. Number one, our health care workers must be protected. They must have the PPE. We've been saying that all along. There was a mad scramble this last time to get the PPE. Internationally it was a mad scramble for all of us. That can never happen again. We have to have the PPE. We have to have the stockpiles. We did an order that said every hospital has to happen 90-day supply of PPE at the COVID rate of usage so we'll never go through this again but it also shows everybody how important the masks and the gloves and the sanitizer are and that they work. You know, it's not that the frontline workers get anything especially more sophisticated than the masks that people wear, the N95 masks. You know, they wear a gown, they wear a mask, they wear gloves, but they follow protocol and those masks work. They work. If they're working for front-line workers, they're going to work for people in their day to day lives and the precautions of gloves and sanitizing, they work.
Also, during this time it's important that we protect New Yorkers who are facing financial hardships. You have people who live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of people in this state live paycheck to paycheck. All the sudden the paycheck stops. Federal government issued a one-time payment of $600 unemployment benefits, but it's not making up the gap for many, many families. And they are struggling and we want to make sure we're doing everything we can. We have a problem in upstate New York where many of the farms can't sell their product. You had a lot of farms that were literally just dumping milk that the dairy farms had produced. But at the same time, you have people in downstate New York who are going hungry and can't buy, can't pay for enough food. Tremendous demand on food banks, so we've been putting the two together. It makes no sense to have upstate farmers who can't sell their product and downstate families that can't get enough to eat. So, we have been funding efforts to connect the farmers to the downstate food banks and we've done that with about $25 million to what we call our Nourish New York initiative. And that has worked, we're funding about 50 food banks that have 2,100 farms that are delivering food to those food banks. And about 20,000 households in the state are participating in that. The volume of food and product that is not being wasted that is supporting upstate farms and helping downstate families is tremendous. We want to continue doing that. The state budget is very, very tight right now with what's going on with the economy. So, philanthropies, foundations, there are a lot of people who want to help. This is a great cause and I would suggest that they help, so we can do even more.
People literally are worried about being able to pay rent. You don't work for two months and that rent bill keeps coming in. You know it's not that the bill payers, the bill collectors have taken a vacation, bill collectors work right, they still send the bill and you still get collection notices. We did by executive order that I issued a moratorium on residential or commercial evictions, you cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent related to this COVID situation and that went through June. So, nobody has been and nobody can be evicted through June, either residential or commercial.
We're going to take additional steps of banning any late payment fees because a person couldn't pay the rent during this period of time. Also, allowing people to use the security deposit as a payment and they can repay it over a prolonged period of time. But also I'm going to extend that moratorium an additional 60 days. It has an expired in June, but people are anxious and June for many people is just next month and the rent bill is going to come due. So, we're going to extend that 60 days until August 20. So, no one can be evicted for nonpayment of rent, residents or commercial because of COVID until August 20. Then, we'll see what happens between now and then. Nobody can really tell you what the future is so that will be in place. I hope it gives families a deep breath. Nothing can happen until August 20 and then we'll figure out between now and August 20 what the situation is.
Also, at this time, principles matter. I understand the anxiety. I understand the stress, but let's remember who we are what we're all about and what principles matter to us. People are talking about reopening the economy, it's more important than public health or public health is more important than the economy and that's the underlying argument in the discussion that you're hearing going on right now. To me, it's never been a question of whether or not we reopen. It's not reopen or not reopen, you have to reopen, you don't have a choice. It's how you reopen. it's how you reopen. To say well, we either have to have a strong economy or protect public health, no that's a false choice.
It's not one or the other, it's both. We have to reopen, get the economy running and we have to protect public health. This is not a situation where you can go to the American people and say, "how many lives are you willing to lose to reopen the economy?" We don't want to lose any lives. You start to hear these what are, to me, absurd arguments. Well yes, if we reopen people will die, but people were going to die anyway. Look, we are all going to die at one point the big question is when or how. The when and how matters. I understand that I am going to die. I just don't want to die now or next week and I don't want to die because I contracted the COVID virus unnecessarily. So, people are going to die. Yes, we are all going to die. That is not a justification in my mind.
it would be a novel defense. Person before a judge, charged with murder. Did you have a gun? Yes. Did you fire the gun? Yes. Did you shoot the person? Yes. Did the person die? Yes, but the person was going to die anyway. Yeah, I know, but it was the gun that killed the person and the bullet and you fired the gun. To go down this road - well, there are old people who will die. Predominantly, on the numbers. By the way, old - how do you define old - not that old is a justification, but we looked at the numbers yesterday the number of new cases coming in to hospitals. Fifty-one-years-old is where the increase starts, 51-60, 61-70, 71-80 is the highest. But 51-60, so 51 is not really old. I know that it's all relative and since I am beyond that 51, it's easy for me to say. But I don't really see 51 as old when we start talking about the old people.
I also think, and I do this for myself, any leader who makes a decision in this situation should be willing to participate in anything they authorize. So there is nothing that we are going to authorize or allow in this state that I, myself, will not be part of. You know, it's too easy to say, "Okay, you can go do this, but I'm going to protect myself and I'm going to stay behind the glass wall." No. If all human life has the same value, if I say something is safe for New Yorkers then I will participate in it because if it's safe for you, it's safe for me, right? That should be our standard going forward.
What we've been doing in New York is look - make the decisions based on facts and data not emotion and politics. I understand the emotion and I understand the anxiety and the stress. I understand politics a little bit. But, that's not the basis for making a decision. Every leader has told us that in different ways. That was John Adams, that was Lincoln, that was FDR, that was Teddy Roosevelt. When my team comes to me and says, "Oh boy, we had a new prison break. There's a flood coming. There's a hurricane. Ebola virus and the air is on fire." Slow down, deep breath. Let's look at the facts, let's understand the situation, and let's take action based on the facts. That is the way to lead, that's the way, I believe, to lead one's life.
Here we have a lot of information. We have a lot of facts. We know the hospitalization rate, we know the infection rate, we know the number of deaths, we're taking antibody tests, we're taking diagnostic tests, we're doing tracing. Make your decisions based on the facts and the data. It sounds simple and basic, but it's more important now than ever before.
And it is working for us. It is working. That's not just me saying that because I'm the governor. You look at what's happening in New York and look at what's happening in the rest of the nation. In New York, the number is coming down. It's coming down dramatically. You take New York out of the rest of the nation's numbers - the rest of the nation is going up and we're coming down.
So, what we're doing is working and when it's working, stay the course. Quote attributed to Winston Churchill, "If you're going through hell, keep going." And that's what we're doing. We're going through hell, but what we're doing is working so we're going to keep going. Because we are New York tough, smart, disciplined, united, and loving.
May 8, 2020.
Video, Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Is a Guest on CBS's the Late Show with Stephen Colbert https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-guest-cbss-late-show-stephen-colbert
Governor Cuomo: "The virus does not discriminate. You have Democrats dying. You have Republicans dying. It is not a red state, blue state issue. It's a national issue ... I don't wear a mask to protect myself - I wear a mask to protect you and you wear a mask to protect me and that's community at its best, you know, that's citizenship at its best and that's what I'm trying to do in New York."
Yesterday evening, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to discuss New York's ongoing effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
VIDEO of the interview made available by CBS can be viewed here.
AUDIO of the Governor's interview is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's interview is available below:
Stephen Colbert: Thanks so much for being with us, Governor, and thank you for everything you're doing to keep our state safe and the public informed. How are you?
Governor Cuomo: I'm doing well. So far so good. As well as I can be doing under the circumstances anyway, Stephen. Thank you for having me - pleasure to be with you. I'm a big fan.
Stephen Colbert: Well, sir, I know you're sequestered right now with adult children. That's in your quarantine bubble. How is that, having the adult kids at home with you?
Governor Cuomo: That's actually cool. You know, my kids are 22, 25 and 25, twins, three girls. I normally can't get them to come home to visit me, Stephen. I normally have to pay them to come visit me. They want a check when they come so to have them with me has really been a silver lining in a weird way, you know, because they're out there living their lives. The last thing they want to do is go hang out with dad in Albany, you know. But they've been here and it's been very helpful to me because with everything going on it's just very grounding for me to go home and have them there and hear their abuse which I'm accustomed to and I know comes from a good place.
Stephen Colbert: Of course. How about the boyfriend? Is the boyfriend still with you?
Governor Cuomo: The boyfriend is still with us, yes. He is.
Stephen Colbert: And we like the boyfriend?
Governor Cuomo: Yes, we like the boyfriend. Official comment, we like the boyfriend. Personal comment, we like the boyfriend. I learned that lesson the hard way. You have to say you like the boyfriend whatever you feel because they're still in the rebellion phase. You say you don't like the boyfriend, they will marry that boyfriend just to spite you. So yes, I like the boyfriend.
Stephen Colbert: And here is why I think you actually like the boyfriend is because you're willing to talk about whether or not you like the boyfriend.
Governor Cuomo: Yes.
Stephen Colbert: Because if you actually didn't like the boyfriend you would never mention the boyfriend.
Governor Cuomo: I would never mention the boyfriend and the boyfriend has been in close proximity so if I really didn't like the boyfriend that would have communicated by now through various means and methods.
Stephen Colbert: Well, I want to talk to you about something that you talked about in your press briefing yesterday. New York State overall numbers are dropping but you reported yesterday that in a survey of 1,300 new COVID patients 66 percent of them had been staying at home. Do we know why these people who are staying at home are still getting sick?
Governor Cuomo: Yes, it's actually interesting, Stephen. The closedown has worked so well and what we feared didn't come true. I was afraid that the essential workers would have a higher infection rate - the health care workers, transit workers, police.
Stephen Colbert: Makes sense.
Governor Cuomo: Yeah, and that did not happen. Actually the health care workers, believe it or not, have a lower infection rate than the general population which just shows the PPE, the masks, et cetera, actually works. The infection rate is now down to an increase among those people who stay home, meaning the closedown is working. We're down to a level now where it's pure personal behavior and whether or not you're wearing a mask and you're using sanitizer because this is now people who are at home who are not working, not taking public transportation. That's the only area that we still see growth and that's actually good news.
Stephen Colbert: Now 30 states are either opening or close to opening but most of those states don't meet the federal guidelines, even the guidelines put out by the White House themselves. New York is not reopening yet but do you have a plan in place?
Governor Cuomo: We have a very specific plan, probably the most specific plan and the government philosophy here is I understand the emotion and the anxiety and the stress, and we all want to reopen as quickly as possible. Everybody does, myself included. But you don't operate out of emotion and passion. You stay with facts and data. So we have been doing that tall along. We follow the science, we follow the facts, we follow the data, and we're going to reopen by the data. We know how many hospitalizations we have. We know what the infection rate is. We know what the testing rate is. Follow the data. And I think the CDC did have guidelines, and you're right, many states are reopening, even though the guidelines are not being followed. We're in the opposite place. New York, the numbers are all going down on every level. Many of the other states, the numbers are still going up, and they're reopening. That not only violates CDC guidelines, that violates common sense. And we're not going to do that. We're going to follow the data, we are on the way down. In a about one week, you'll see some regions in the state with lower numbers starting to reopen their economies, and as those numbers stabilize, you'll see more economic growth.
Stephen Colbert: Well, you made a good point that while nationally, there may be a flattening of the curve, if you take New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, if you take those numbers, where the numbers are going down, you take that out of the equation, for the rest of the country, we're still going up. What advice do you have for the other governors who are governing states right now that do not have the same crisis level of COVID infections that New York experienced, but are in no way exempt from it, just because it hasn't happened yet?
Governor Cuomo: No look Stephen, I think it is short term, I understand the short-term benefit of opening. The pressure to open is tremendous. The political pressure is tremendous. People want out. They want out of the home, people need a paycheck, they want to get back to work, they want to make sure they have a job, I get it. So I understand the short term pressure, but long term, we have seen what has happened in countries that open too quickly, and then they wound up closing again. To open and then close two weeks or three weeks later because that infection rate goes through the roof again makes no sense. Calibrate the opening and don't open until you have those numbers under control. Now you're right, New York, we're on the decline. The rest of the country is still on the incline when you take out New York. And in about one week, again, you'll start to see some regions open, but I think it is a mistake to respond to the emotion when you know the facts are saying something different. So I suggest communicate the facts to people. You know, I quoted Lincoln today in one of my press briefings. Lincoln really believed in the American people. And he said if you tell them the truth, they will keep the country safe. What I've been doing all through this is just giving people the facts, right. This is New York. I couldn't have said to New Yorkers, we're going to close your schools, close your business, you have to stay at home. New Yorkers would have told me the equivalent of pound sand, you know, no government has ever done that before. But I've been laying out tall the facts every day. Here's just the facts, not my opinion, no politics, here are the facts. And if you lay out the facts think people get it. You know, people are paying attention to this. This is not a normal issue. This affects them. This is not about politics, this is about their health and safety, and their children. They've been following it. Lay out the facts and they will do the right thing. And that's what we're doing in New York and it has worked.
Stephen Colbert: How's the communication, the cooperation gone between, I'm not sure how many states it was in the northeast, you formed sort of a cooperative group of states, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island
Governor Cuomo: Delaware, Massachusetts, Connecticut, year. That's going, we have about seven states that we work with, which are all basically contiguous, right. And it makes sense because the virus doesn't stop at a state boundary. And people get in cars, and they drive, and Amtrak goes through the states. So we're coordinating the best we can our closing policy and our reopening policy to make sure we know what each other is doing, because whatever one state does affects another state, right. We're seeing now some states that opens up and people from surrounding states are now going to that state. If Connecticut opens up beaches, you'll see New Yorkers going to Connecticut.
Stephen Colbert: Georgia allowed haircuts, and people flooded into Georgia to get their haircuts.
Governor Cuomo: Well you have such a pent-up demand, right. Think about it. People will go anywhere. People will get in the car and drive a couple of hours just to get out of the house for a couple of hours.
Stephen Colbert: Speaking of haircuts, your brother Chris got a very short haircut. Serious question, I thought the dog groomers were all closed in New York.
Governor Cuomo: Well, where he went was even worse than going to a dog groomer. He had the COVID virus, he then gave his wife the COVID virus, he was quarantined in the basement, she was quarantined upstairs. After he gave her the COVID virus, he said, he told me that she forgave him. He then gave her the shears to cut his hair. And she cut his hair like Delilah cut Samson's hair. And she gave it all back to him, so, you know, that was a passive-aggressive, still angry haircut. He has a shorter haircut, I told him it's like a prison haircut, you know.
Stephen Colbert: Exactly. When you've got a slight institutionalized look to it. He's got shoes without laces right now.
Governor Cuomo: Oh yeah.
Stephen Colbert: Governor, we have to take a little bit of a break but if you could please stick around we'll be right back with more Governor Andrew Cuomo
...
Stephen Colbert: Hey everybody, we're back here with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Now, I'm asking this next question for a friend. When will late night shows in New York be allowed to have audiences again? Not that it's important to me, I don't care, I don't live for laughter. I'm asking for Fallon and Seth, I'm just curious, I'm sure it's hurting them.
Governor Cuomo: Yeah, well you can tell them to call me, because I can make that happen.
Stephen Colbert: You can? Okay, please.
Governor Cuomo: Fallon and Seth.
Stephen Colbert: I have a friend who's getting desperate to be in front of an audience again.
Governor Cuomo: Fallon and Seth, okay, I'll call Fallon and Seth.
Stephen Colbert: Okay good. Now, how've things changed in our preparedness and how will you respond if there is another wave in the fall, as some people caution?
Governor Cuomo: Well look, we learned a lot of lessons here the hard way, Stephen. First, we learned about tracking these global pandemics in the first place. We were all watching China because there was an outbreak in China. Turns out that the virus that came to New York came through Europe, and nobody was even aware of it. We did the China travel ban, the president announced the China travel ban, but we had people coming from Europe, and the virus had left China, gone to Europe and was coming from Europe. And we had two million people come in from Europe, and that's how the virus came to New York. Our healthcare system was not ready for this, we didn't have the equipment, we didn't have the PPE, et cetera. So we've learned a lot of lessons, and we won't make those errors again. It's the first time we've ever really had to deal with a global pandemic in this country, and I'm sure every state has learned a lot. We're anticipating a second wave. Some of the experts talk about a second wave, third wave, the 1918 pandemic had three waves, 18 months from beginning to end. So we will be in a better position and we'll be more prepared from a health system point of view, that I can promise you.
Stephen Colbert: Now, you have been very about trying to keep this apolitical and you have not risen to any of the President's bait about talking about the blue states not managing their own finances or their own COVID crises. But what do you say to the President when he says it wouldn't be fair to Republicans to be bailing out blue states right now who are the heavy, urban population states who are dealing with the COVID crisis at its highest levels?
Governor Cuomo: First, you are right. I try to stay away from the politics because this is such an ugly divided political environment to begin with. Once that political flag goes up, Stephen, people change the lens and everything becomes political. You are 50-50. And we need everybody on the same page here, we need all New Yorkers to work together so I stay 100 miles away from politics. But states do need funding and we do need federal legislation providing funding for states. You have the states in charge of reopening. The President has made that clear. It is up to the Governor's. I have a $13 billion deficit. You know, my state has a terrible financial hole because of this virus, and all states are in the same position. If you want to get the economy back running, you have to fund states. The federal legislation does small business, airlines, etc. The states fund police and fire and school and teachers. So, you have to fund the states. The bailout argument is just nonsensical. If you look at who pays the bills in this country, who contributes more money, New York contributes more money to the federal government every year than it gets back. We in essence have been subsidizing the federal government other states to the tune of billions of dollar every year. We put in about $30 billion more every year than we get back. So, if anything New York has been bailing out the nation for many, many years. But look, this is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is just not. The virus does not discriminate. You have Democrats dying. You have Republicans dying. It is not a red state, blue state issue. It's a national issue - it is a red, white and blue issue, and I just refuse to get into that partisan fight because for me I'm trying to handle this situation in New York. I have Democrats, Republicans, I have Independents - I have everything in New York and I need everyone to know that I am not speaking out of any political tone. I have no politics in this. I'm not running for anything else. I'm not going anywhere else. I'm just Governor of New York and I represent them Democrat, Republican and we're all on the same page and we're all trying to accomplish the same thing. And that feeling of mutuality that we used to have in this nation, which is gone, I want to have that in New York. I want everyone to know we're on the same page, we have the same agenda. I'm trying to protect you while you're trying to protect me. You know that mask is a beautiful metaphor. I don't wear a mask to protect myself - I wear a mask to protect you and you wear a mask to protect me and that's community at its best, you know, that's citizenship at its best and that's what I'm trying to do in New York.
Stephen Colbert: Sire, we have to take one more quick break. If you can just give us a moment more we'll be right back with Governor Andrew Cuomo.
...
Stephen Colbert: Hey everybody, we're back with Governor Andrew Cuomo. You've talked about your father and the lessons that you learn from him - how do you think your father would be handling this coronavirus right now?
Governor Cuomo: Better than I am that I can tell you. No, my father was the best.
Stephen Colbert: How does he inspire you and the lessons he taught you not only about governing as the State of New York himself but also about what it means to be an American and what it means to be community-minded - how does that influence the way that you're approaching this crisis?
Governor Cuomo: My father was always representative of our best selves. If our better angels needed a spokesperson, they would hire my father, right? That's where he came from, that's what he spoke to and I still hear my father every day, you know, his voice is still in my head and his love is still in my heart so he would be saying, "rise above." He would be saying, "rise above, don't get into the gutter with them, don't let them pull you down, don't go for the bait, rise above. This is a transcendent crisis and it's not about you and your ego and your personality, who cares what they say, rise above and lead people up, lead people up, the state motto Excelsior, ever upwards, Excelsior, ever upwards." I added another expression to the state seal which was one of his favorites "e pluribusunum," out of many one you put those two together, Stephen, you have everything Excelsior, ever upwards, aspirational, e pluribus unum, out of many one community, our founding premise. That's what he would be saying.
Stephen Colbert: Well, I got two very important questions to close out with here, Governor. I need to ask you about a recent survey - 2,000 people were surveyed and they found that the Cuomo Brothers, you and your brother Chris, tied as the most desirable men in New York. Now as an older brother can you abide by a tie? Do you want to do anything right now to push yourself over the top in terms of desirableness? Do you want to loosen the top button, want to give us a smoldering stare, anything? Put him in his place?
Governor Cuomo: Well first, smoldering stare, first of all, my brother has to be disqualified because he's not eligible. He is married so he's not eligible so he's out. First of all he's out.
Stephen Colbert: There it is.
Governor Cuomo: There it is, see? DQ. He's out of the competition. He's out of the running. I win.
Stephen Colbert: Okay, in the movie of this when it's finally made, who do you want to have play you because last night, we know Brad Pitt is already playing Dr. Fauci, but last night I had De Niro on the show and he said he wants to play you. Do you approve of that casting.
Governor Cuomo: Well first, how does Brad Pitt play, how do we get Brad Pitt to Dr. Fauci? How do you see that?
Stephen Colbert: Dr. Fauci asked that in the movie, he would like if Brad Pitt would play Dr. Fauci and Pitt showed up on SNL as Dr. Fauci so that's cast.
Governor Cuomo: All right, so that's great. Okay. Look—
Stephen Colbert: De Niro?
Governor Cuomo: De Niro, I am a big De Niro fan. He is just phenomenal. The breath of his ability. I mean just look at all the roles he's played. He can do anything, right? Deer Hunter, Cape Fear, he can do comedy. How about Taxi Driver?
Stephen Colbert: Sure.
Governor Cuomo: I'm going to do Tax Driver. The next press conference when a reporter asks me a question, you talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Oh boy, that would be a treat. I'm a big De Niro fan. He's a genius. He's a genius.
Stephen Colbert: Well, Governor, thank you so much for talking to us today and thank you for keeping us informed and keeping us safe.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you, Stephen. All the best to you. Stay safe, you and your family.
May 8, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces State Will Extend Window for Victims to File Cases under the Child Victims Act until January 14th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-state-will-extend-window-victims-file
Drive-Through Events Scheduled in Communities Across the State as Part of Nourish New York Initiative Will Help to Put Food on the Table for 20,000 Households Impacted by COVID-19 Over the Next Week
Confirms 2,938 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 330,407; New Cases in 49 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the state will extend the window for victims to file otherwise time-barred cases under the Child Victims Act for an additional five months until January 14, 2021. Last year, Governor Cuomo signed the Child Victims Act to ensure survivors of childhood sexual abuse have a path to justice, including the ability to file a case which had already been time-barred or expired, but only for one year, that window to file an expired or time-barred case was set to close August 14, 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a reduction in court services that has limited survivors' ability to file claims and effectively prepare their cases with an attorney.
The Governor also announced that dozens of events are taking place across New York State over the next week to kick off the Nourish New York Initiative. The initiative, launched last week by the Governor, is providing $25 million to food banks for the purchase of surplus agricultural products from New York State farms to distribute to populations who need them most. The first event took place today on Long Island, where the Island Harvest Food Bank held a drive-through food distribution event to provide New York grown and produced products to 3,000 families impacted by the coronavirus. The State's other food banks are each holding similar events over the next week, which are expected to help put food on the table for 20,000 households that have been impacted by COVID-19.
Last year we passed the Child Victims Act in New York which allowed survivors of sexual abuse as children to file a claim until August.
Governor Cuomo
"Many aspects of society have been closed down or are less operational during this pandemic, and the court system is among them," Governor Cuomo said. "Last year we passed the Child Victims Act in New York which allowed survivors of sexual abuse as children to file a claim until August. Because of the reduction in court services due to the virus, we are extending that window for an additional five months until January 14th to ensure survivors have the access to the courts that they need to file a claim and get the long-overdue justice they deserve. And I would like to thank Senator Hoylman and Assemblymember Rosenthal for continuing to champion this issue so that COVID-19 does not defer justice for these survivors."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,938 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 330,407 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 330,407 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,384
36
Allegany
35
0
Broome
364
4
Cattaraugus
59
0
Cayuga
52
0
Chautauqua
40
0
Chemung
130
1
Chenango
105
0
Clinton
74
5
Columbia
304
2
Cortland
29
0
Delaware
63
0
Dutchess
3,277
44
Erie
4,255
119
Essex
31
1
Franklin
17
1
Fulton
103
2
Genesee
169
1
Greene
199
1
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
76
2
Jefferson
66
2
Lewis
10
0
Livingston
100
5
Madison
249
3
Monroe
1,735
47
Montgomery
64
1
Nassau
37,812
219
Niagara
605
17
NYC
181,783
1,567
Oneida
620
11
Onondaga
1169
54
Ontario
104
3
Orange
9,402
74
Orleans
121
13
Oswego
72
2
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,074
8
Rensselaer
380
13
Rockland
12,349
69
Saratoga
388
14
Schenectady
558
7
Schoharie
45
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
46
0
St. Lawrence
187
6
Steuben
225
1
Suffolk
36,223
331
Sullivan
1,039
18
Tioga
99
2
Tompkins
131
1
Ulster
1,429
13
Warren
199
6
Washington
201
11
Wayne
79
1
Westchester
30,905
197
Wyoming
73
2
Yates
20
1
May 8, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Members of the Reimagine Education Advisory Council. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-members-reimagine-education-advisory
Comprised of Education Leaders from Across the State Chosen to Assist Schools and Colleges Prepare to Adopt Technological and Other Innovations to Safely Reopen
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the members of New York's Reimagine Education Advisory Council—made up of educators, students, parents and education leaders— to help districts reimagine schools as they prepare to reopen while protecting health and safety, how virtual learning can bridge the gap, and supplement face to face education when schools reopen. The Council - chaired by SUNY Empire State College President Jim Malatras - will be comprised of lower and higher education leaders from across the state. The list of members is available below:
Kaweeda Adams, Superintendent, Albany City School District
Jaime Alicea, Superintendent, Syracuse City School District
Jody Gottfried Arnhold, Founder, Dance Educator Laboratory (DEL) 92Y
Melodie Baker, Director of Education, United Way of Buffalo & Erie County
Kyle Belokopitsky, Executive Director, New York State PTA
Meg Benke, Provost, SUNY Empire State College
Jackie Burbridge, Parent, Suffolk County
Katie Campos, Partner, Strategic Collective
Anthony Collins, President, Clarkson University
Stephanie Conklin, Master Teacher, South Colonie Central School District
George Dermody, CEO, The Children’s Home of Wyoming Conference
Karol Mason, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Austin Ostro, President, SUNY Student Assembly
Martin Palermo, Master Teacher, William Floyd School District
Roger Ramsammy, President, Hudson Valley Community College
Seema Rivera, President, Guilderland Central School District School Board
Shannon Tahoe, Interim Commissioner, New York State Education Department
Dennis Walcott, Former Chancellor, New York City Department of Education
Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers
"When we closed school facilities because of the COVID-19 virus, our teachers and students rose to the occasion, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for their heroic work," Governor Cuomo said. "Like everything else, when we do reopen schools it's not just about reopening as they were before, it's about building back even better than before. The collective expertise and experience of this new advisory council will help answer key questions about how we can strengthen New York's entire education system for decades to come."
The Council will work in collaboration with other experts and stakeholders including the state and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to answer key questions about what education should look in the future using new technologies and to develop a blueprint to reimagine education in the new normal.
May 8, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces State Will Extend Window for Victims to File Cases under the Child Victims Act until January 14th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-22
Drive-Through Events Scheduled in Communities Across the State as Part of Nourish New York Initiative Will Help to Put Food on the Table for 20,000 Households Impacted by COVID-19 Over the Next Week
Confirms 2,938 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 330,407; New Cases in 49 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "We passed a law in New York called the Child Victims Act, which was long overdue. It allowed survivors or sexual abuse as children to file a claim. We then had a window of time that they could actually file the claim. Because of the reduction in court services, we want to extend that window and we'll extend it for an additional five months until January 14th because people need access to the courts to make their claim. Justice too long delayed is justice denied, Martin Luther King Jr. So we will extend that window for people to bring their case."
Cuomo: "We turned that curve. No one else. And we are going to determine what that rate of infection is going forward. You tell me how we behave today, I will tell you the rate of infection three days from now. You tell me how we behave today, I'll tell you the number of people who walk into a hospital in seven days or 10 days. It is that clear, cause and effect. It is that clear. That's also liberating. Finally, our destiny, our future, is in our hands."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the state will extend the window for victims to file otherwise time-barred cases under the Child Victims Act for an additional five months until January 14, 2021. Last year, Governor Cuomo signed the Child Victims Act to ensure survivors of childhood sexual abuse have a path to justice, including the ability to file a case which had already been time-barred or expired, but only for one year, that window to file an expired or time-barred case was set to close August 14, 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a reduction in court services that has limited survivors' ability to file claims and effectively prepare their cases with an attorney.
The Governor also announced that dozens of events are taking place across New York State over the next week to kick off the Nourish New York Initiative. The initiative, launched last week by the Governor, is providing $25 million to food banks for the purchase of surplus agricultural products from New York State farms to distribute to populations who need them most. The first event took place today on Long Island, where the Island Harvest Food Bank held a drive-through food distribution event to provide New York grown and produced products to 3,000 families impacted by the coronavirus. The State's other food banks are each holding similar events over the next week, which are expected to help put food on the table for 20,000 households that have been impacted by COVID-19.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. Good afternoon, depending on how accurate your watch is. Let me introduce the people who are with me today. From my right, Dr. Howard Zucker, our health commissioner, he's been doing great work. To my left, Melissa DeRosa, who is secretary to the governor, which is the top position in state government. To her left, Gareth Rhodes, who is deputy superintendent and special counsel to the New York State Department of Financial Services, but who has been working with the chamber on this station and has been doing an excellent job. We're at Marist College today, it's a pleasure to be here. Dr. Dennis Murray, pleasure, thank you very much for having us. Marist, go Red Foxes. We're in Poughkeepsie, which is right down from Albany, New York. Right down the Hudson river. Beautiful ride today, going down the Hudson River. Many people fishing, little fishing envy. Striped bass season in New York. No fishing for me, but that's okay, there's always next year.
Albert Einstein, I do not like to state an opinion on a matter unless I know the precise facts. Good advice. Wouldn't it be nice if all of those talking heads on TV took that advice? No opinion unless you know the fact. Let's talk about some facts. Total hospitalizations, down to 8,196, good news. Change in hospitalizations you see has been going down. Change in intubations is also down, and that's really good news. The percentage of people once intubated that actually successfully come off a ventilator is very low, so that is very good news. And the number of new COVID hospitalizations per day is just about flat, has been flat for a few days. These are the number of new cases that are coming in the door every day, or people who were in the hospital who then test positive for COVID. And these charts, I look at the line more than anything, and what the curve is actually saying more than the specific number. We would have hoped to see a steady, sharp decline in those numbers, right. We went up very quickly, as you see on the left of the screen. We would have hoped that we would have come down very quickly, hit the top, and then come down. That's not what was happening, it's more flattening out. Question when we look at these charts now, will it flatten out or will it continue to drop? When you look at the actual projection model, the IHME, this is one of the more accurate projection models, they show it going down but you even have several hundred cases in mid-June. So, these models have been instructive but not necessarily determinative in the past. But that's what we're watching now going forward. Same thing on the number of lives lost.
This is probably the most important statistic and the most painful. 216 New Yorkers passed away yesterday, that's 216 families. You see that it's been persistently constant in the 200 range for the past few days. We're also looking at that, what does that curve do? What does that line do? Does it slowly decline? We would have liked to have see, again, up and then a fast decline. Possibility that it flattens out at one point. But, again, we don't know. We don't know. So, we go day to day and we see and we react given the facts we're presented with.
The lack of facts can hurt you. We've seen that, I believe, during this global pandemic. How did it happen? Why weren't we ahead of it? Not just for retrospective but also prospectively. If you don't understand how it happened last time and you don't learn the lessons of what happened last time, then you will repeat them, right? And there's a chance this virus comes back. They talk about a second wave. They talk about a mutation. And if it's not this virus, another public health issue. And I think we have to learn from this. Unfortunately, we learn from it as we're going through it because we may not have the luxury of time. If they're right about the speculation of the second wave in the fall or winter - we have to start getting ready now.
And it is shocking to me that so many months, so many weeks we talked about the virus was coming from China, from China, from China. Now it turns out the virus didn't come to the East Coast from China, it came from Europe. And all of those talking heads, that is a relatively new fact. When you then look back at the timeline of what was going on, and I think it's informative. We talk about the virus in China last year, end of last year, November and December. We had the first case in the state of Washington, January 21. We then had the China travel ban by the president on February 2nd, which was a right move in retrospect. Six weeks later, you have the travel ban from Europe, and then we still have John F. Kennedy Airport open in New York as what's called the quote, unquote funnel airports. There were about four airports in the nation that were left open, for flights coming from China and Europe. John F. Kennedy Airport, our main international airport, was one of them.
When you look back November to April is a long period of time. And what happened apparently is the virus got on a plane from China, someone who was infected got on a plane and went to Europe and then from Europe, the virus mutated in Europe and then flew to New York City, Newark Airport, flew to places on the East Coast, flew to Chicago. And you can see why, right? The virus wasn't going to stay in China and wait for us to deal with it in China. Everybody talks about how mobile people are and global interconnections, et cetera. And that's what happened. But nobody was saying, "Beware of people coming from Europe." We weren't testing people coming from Europe. We weren't telling anyone at the time if you have a European visitor or European guest, make sure they get tested. They walked right through the airport.
Well, I understand what happened in retrospect. But we have to make sure it doesn't happen again. From December to March, 3 million Europeans came through our airports. You wonder why we have such a high infection rate. You put 3 million Europeans coming into this market undetected. You don't tell anyone. There's no precautions. There's no testing and then you let people circulate in this dense environment. You're going to have the virus spread and that's exactly what happened and many of those people didn't stay in New York. They just landed at JFK, connected to another flight, and flew to a city in the United States. That's what happened. Flights from China proportionately go to the West Coast of the United States. But the European flights, they come to the East Coast. Three million Europeans is a lot of people and, again, it was months of people coming and people circulating before we were really put on notice.
So learning what happened is important so we don't make the same mistake again twice, right? And we're prepared in the future and I think a word of caution would be today we must consider an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere. You hear about an outbreak in China, you hear about an outbreak in Korea, just assume that it gets on the plane the next day, somebody who's infected gets on plain, and can go anywhere on the globe literally.
One fact we do know about COVID is we know there's still a lot that we don't know about this virus. Some things that we thought were facts are now being revisited. We were told if you had the virus you then had antibodies. You would then be immune from getting it a second time. Now there's some questions about whether or not you're immune, how immune you would be even if you have the antibodies.
We were led to believe that the good news about this virus was it didn't affect children which was taken as great news, right? Now we have a new issue that we're looking at which is something we're just investigating now. But while rare, we're seeing some cases where children affected with the COVID virus can become ill with symptoms similar to the Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome that literally causes inflammation in their blood vessels. This past Thursday a five-year-old passed away from COVID-related complications and the state Department of Health is investigating several other cases that present similar circumstances.
This would be really painful news and would open up an entirely different chapter because I can't tell you how many people I spoke to who took peace and solace in the fact that children were not getting infected. We thought children might be vehicles of transmission, a child could get infected and come home and infect a family, but we didn't think children would suffer from it. If this is true, some of these children are very, very old. So caution to all people who, again, may have believed that their child couldn't be affected by COVID. This information suggests we may want to revisit that quote/unquote fact, that assumption. If you see any of the symptoms that are on the chart that your child is evidencing, caution should be taken because this is something that we're looking at. Again, there has been at least one fatality because of this and there may be others that are now under investigation. So, this is every parent's nightmare, right? That your child may actually be affected by this virus. But it's something we have to consider seriously now.
Another fact we do know about this and a common thread with the virus is that it effects minority communities more dramatically. Nothing biological about the minority community, but demographically, socially, the infection rate is higher. New York State does not have the same disparities we see in other states around the county, thankfully, but we do have a disparity. It's, again, relatively modest, but something that we won't tolerate. You see it in the Hispanic community, you see it in the African-American community where they are disproportionately affected.
We asked the hospitals to look at the new cases that are walking in the door to see what we can learn about where we are now because we've taken so many actions, so many dramatic actions. We've closed down schools, closed down businesses. We're testing. We still have new cases. We're getting additional information on these news cases now. When you look at the new cases and where they're coming from in the state, it's clear that a majority of the new cases and a disproportionate number are coming from minority communities. 21 zip codes with the highest rate of hospitalization - 20 have greater than average black and/or Latino populations. So, this is something that we're focused on and we're going to address and we will address immediately. We will have more information on this in the next couple of days.
We must also adjust to the changing circumstances. Given the shutdown, many aspects of society have been closed down and are less operational, the court system is among them. It's done a lot of work thanks to what the court system has been able to manage by remote telecommunication, et cetera. But we passed a law in New York called the Child Victim Act, which was long overdue. It allowed survivors or sexual abuse as children to file a claim. We then had a window of time that they could actually file the claim. Because of the reduction in court services, we want to extend that window and we'll extend it for an additional five months until January 14th because people need access to the courts to make their claim. Justice too long delayed is justice denied, Martin Luther King Jr. So we will extend that window for people to bring their case.
The good news on the overall is we're finally ahead of this virus, right? For so long we were playing catch up. We talked about the facts and circumstances that we found out about it. It was in China, it had moved, and we were playing catch up. We were behind it. Now, I feel for the first time, we're actually ahead of it. We have showed that we can control the beast. You look at those numbers coming down. Remember, our numbers are coming down in New York. Most states in this country, you still see the numbers going up. You take New York out of the national numbers, and you see the cases are on the incline. We have it on the decline. So we have the beast on the run, there's no doubt about that. We haven't killed the beast, but we're ahead of it. And the hospitalization rate's coming down and the death rate is coming down, so that's all good news. And I feel that we are, for the first time in this engagement, we're actually ahead of the virus.
We have to stay there, and we have to figure out what the next move is that the virus is going to make and we have to stay ahead of it. But, we are ahead of it. And we are in control of our own destiny. You know, why is that virus on decline? Why are those cases going down? Because we're making the number of cases go down. We are reducing the number of infections. If we didn't do anything, you would have seen that infection number keep going straight up. We reopen irresponsibly, you will see that infection number go straight up. We are reducing the rate of infection by our actions, wearing the masks, the closedowns, the precautions. And it's not subject to the whims of the virus. We are in control of the spread of the virus. And that is good news to me. We just have to stay there. And we will because we are New York tough, smart, united, disciplined, loving and the great State of New York is showing the way forward once again.
May 8, 2020.
Governor Cuomo Announces State Department of Health is Investigating Evidence That COVID-19 Can Cause Severe Illness in Children. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-state-department-health-investigating-evidence-covid-19-can-cause
On Thursday, a 5-Year-Old Boy Passed Away in NYC from These COVID-Related Complications
Health Department Has Issued an Advisory to Inform Health Care Providers About This Serious Inflammatory Disease
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the State Department of Health is investigating several cases of severe illness in children and child deaths that may be related to COVID-19. There have been 73 reported cases in New York where children are experiencing symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome possibly due to COVID-19, and on Thursday a 5-year-old boy passed away in New York City from these COVID-related complications. The Governor has directed the Department of Health to work with the CDC to develop a case definition for this illness to determine whether the remaining cases under investigation are definitively associated with the syndrome.
At the direction of Governor Cuomo, the State Department of Health has issued an advisory about this serious inflammatory disease, called "Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19," to inform healthcare providers of the condition, as well as to provide guidance for testing and reporting. Health care providers, including hospitals, are required to report to the Department of Health all cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with COVID-19 in those under 21 years of age.
New Yorkers should seek immediate care if a child has:
Prolonged fever (more than five days)
Difficulty feeding (infants) or is too sick to drink fluids
Severe abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting
Change in skin color - becoming pale, patchy and/or blue
Trouble breathing or is breathing very quickly
Racing heart or chest pain
Decreased amount of frequency in urine
Lethargy, irritability or confusion
"There's still so much we don't know about COVID-19, and in the beginning we were led to believe that the good news about this virus was it didn't affect children," Governor Cuomo said. "Now we have a new issue that we're looking at where some children affected with the COVID-19 virus are becoming ill with symptoms similar to the Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome. This would be really painful news and would open up an entirely different chapter in our fight against this virus, and the State Department of Health is currently investigating these cases to learn more. In the meantime, we are cautioning all people to look out for the symptoms of this serious illness and to seek help immediately if your child is sick."
New York State Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said, "With each passing day we're learning more about this terrible virus, and this potentially new development requires even greater understanding. We'll devote the resources of the department to research each potential case and share our findings with healthcare providers around the state and country."
Though most children who get COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms, in the United Kingdom, a possible link has also been reported between pediatric COVID-19 and serious inflammatory disease. The inflammatory syndrome has features which overlap with Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome and may occur days to weeks after acute COVID-19 illness. It can include persistent fever, abdominal symptoms, rash, and even cardiovascular symptoms requiring intensive care.
Early recognition by pediatricians and referral to a specialist including to critical care is essential. Molecular and serological testing for COVID-19 in children exhibiting the above symptoms is recommended. The majority of patients have tested positive for COVID-19, some on molecular testing for SARS-COV-2, others on serological testing.
May 9, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Launches New Initiative to Expand Access to Testing in Low-Income Communities and Communities of Color. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-launches-new-initiative-expand-access-testing-low
State is Partnering with Northwell Health to Establish 24 Temporary Testing Sites at Churches in Predominately Minority Communities
Results of State's Diagnostic and Antibody Surveys and Comprehensive Survey of Newly Admitted Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19 Found Communities of Color are Most Impacted by COVID-19
Preliminary Results of Antibody Testing Survey of More Than 1,300 Transit Workers in the NYC Region Show 14.2 Percent Have COVID-19 Antibodies
Confirms 2,715 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 333,122; New Cases in 48 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of a new initiative to expand access to testing in low-income communities and communities of color. The state is partnering with Northwell Health to establish an initial 24 temporary testing sites at churches in predominately minority communities in downstate New York to build on the state's network of downstate testing sites.
The results of the state's diagnostic testing and antibody testing surveys show that low-income and minority communities are suffering the most from COVID-19. The largest statewide antibody testing survey of 15,000 New Yorkers found a greater infection rate in communities of color. Additionally, the state's comprehensive survey of all newly admitted patients hospitalized for COVID-19 found communities of color are most impacted and of the 21 zip codes with the most new COVID-19 hospitalizations, 20 have greater than average black and/or Latino populations. A deeper look into two of the most impacted communities in the survey, in Brooklyn and the Bronx, found communities of color are also lower-income and have a greater percentage of COVID-19 hospitalizations and infections than New York City overall.
Today's testing expansion initiative builds on previous state actions to address inequalities and deliver for those most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, the state has partnered with Ready Responders to bring healthcare services, including COVID-19 diagnostic testing, to residents of public housing in New York City and delivered one million cloth masks and 10,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to public housing.
The Governor also announced the preliminary results of the state's antibody testing survey of more than 1,300 transit workers in the New York City region show 14.2 percent have COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City.
"It is a cruel fact that when you look at disasters and emergencies the poorest and most disadvantaged people often pay the highest price, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no different," Governor Cuomo said. "The fact is that low-income and minority communities are suffering the most - it is not right and we have to address it. In New York we are working to break this cycle and actually resolve these disparities. We have already taken aggressive actions to help these communities, and we are going to partner with Northwell Health to set up additional testing sites at churches in predominately minority communities. And I want to thank our Congressional partners and the church groups who have been working with us on this issue."
The fact is that low-income and minority communities are suffering the most - it is not right and we have to address it. In New York we are working to break this cycle.
Northwell Health President & CEO Michael Dowlingsaid, "Given the prevalence of the coronavirus within communities of color, it's imperative that we act quickly to prevent further spread of the virus. Among the ways we can protect our communities - beyond social distancing, wearing face masks, avoiding group gatherings and basic hand hygiene - is through testing. Northwell is pleased to partner with Governor Cuomo and the New York State Department of Health to offer antibody and diagnostic testing to churches throughout the city and Long Island."
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries said, "We know that the houses of worship, the spiritual community, has always been there to help the community get through the storm. So, now at this moment, thanks to their continued engagement and the Governor's leadership and willingness to partner, we can address this COVID-19 pandemic with these houses of worship and religious leaders who have the credibility, the authenticity, and the capacity to reach those in the community who need to be tested. At the end of the day, this is not over for any of us until it's over for all of us. We know that communities of color have been hit particularly hard. This testing initiative will be incredibly essential to ensure we can turn the corner in communities of color such as those that I represent as well as those represented, of course, by great members of the delegation like Nydia Velázquez, Yvette Clarke, Greg Meeks, Adriano Espaillat and so many others. So thank you, Governor, for your partnership."
Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke said, "Our Black and Hispanic Brothers and Sisters are dying at higher rates of COVID-19, including in my Central-South Brooklyn District. Access to testing is critical in curbing the spread of coronavirus especially in these communities. It is prudent that we come together to ensure minority communities have access to quality health care and testing, which is why I stand with Governor Cuomo in partnering on COVID-19 testing expansion in low-income and minority communities. Only by working together can we combat this virus--only by working together can New York persevere."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,715 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 333,122 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 333,122 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,416
32
Allegany
35
0
Broome
372
8
Cattaraugus
60
1
Cayuga
53
1
Chautauqua
40
0
Chemung
131
1
Chenango
109
4
Clinton
76
2
Columbia
304
0
Cortland
29
0
Delaware
63
0
Dutchess
3,319
42
Erie
4,337
82
Essex
31
0
Franklin
17
0
Fulton
104
1
Genesee
170
1
Greene
204
5
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
77
1
Jefferson
67
1
Lewis
11
1
Livingston
101
1
Madison
250
1
Monroe
1,775
40
Montgomery
66
2
Nassau
38,028
216
Niagara
627
22
NYC
183,289
1,506
Oneida
638
18
Onondaga
1,218
49
Ontario
104
0
Orange
9,486
84
Orleans
122
1
Oswego
75
3
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,080
6
Rensselaer
407
27
Rockland
12,400
51
Saratoga
399
11
Schenectady
571
13
Schoharie
46
1
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
48
2
St. Lawrence
187
0
Steuben
226
1
Suffolk
36,461
238
Sullivan
1,071
32
Tioga
104
5
Tompkins
132
1
Ulster
1,440
11
Warren
202
3
Washington
204
3
Wayne
79
0
Westchester
31,087
182
Wyoming
75
2
Yates
20
0
May 9, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Launches New Initiative to Expand Access to Testing in Low-Income Communities and Communities of Color. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-launches-new
State is Partnering with Northwell Health to Establish 24 Temporary Testing Sites at Churches in Predominately Minority Communities
Results of State's Diagnostic and Antibody Surveys and Comprehensive Survey of Newly Admitted Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19 Found Communities of Color are Most Impacted by COVID-19
Preliminary Results of Antibody Testing Survey of More Than 1,300 Transit Workers in the NYC Region Show 14.2 Percent Have COVID-19 Antibodies
Confirms 2,715 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 333,122; New Cases in 48 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "Today we're launching a new initiative, again to address exactly this which is to expand access to testing in low-income communities and communities of color. We're partnering with Northwell Health which is the largest health system in New York and they're going to set up 24 additional testing sites at churches in predominantly minority communities."
Cuomo: "This is a different kind of partnership, it's creative, but it's necessary. We're working with both churches individually and association of churches and Northwell. Northwell will provide the testing in churches in lower-income communities and communities of color. The churches will help us outreach to the community to get people to come in and explain why it's important that people come in and get tested when you put the church based sites together with the drive-thru sites, together with the walk-in testing sites, and our sites at public housing, the coverage will be extensive."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of a new initiative to expand access to testing in low-income communities and communities of color. The state is partnering with Northwell Health to establish an initial 24 temporary testing sites at churches in predominately minority communities in downstate New York to build on the state's network of downstate testing sites.
The results of the state's diagnostic testing and antibody testing surveys show that low-income and minority communities are suffering the most from COVID-19. The largest statewide antibody testing survey of 15,000 New Yorkers found a greater infection rate in communities of color. Additionally, the state's comprehensive survey of all newly admitted patients hospitalized for COVID-19 found communities of color are most impacted and of the 21 zip codes with the most new COVID-19 hospitalizations, 20 have greater than average black and/or Latino populations. A deeper look into two of the most impacted communities in the survey, in Brooklyn and the Bronx, found communities of color are also lower-income and have a greater percentage of COVID-19 hospitalizations and infections than New York City overall.
Today's testing expansion initiative builds on previous state actions to address inequalities and deliver for those most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent weeks, the state has partnered with Ready Responders to bring healthcare services, including COVID-19 diagnostic testing, to residents of public housing in New York City and delivered one million cloth masks and 10,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to public housing.
The Governor also announced the preliminary results of the state's antibody testing survey of more than 1,300 transit workers in the New York City region show 14.2 percent have COVID-19 antibodies, compared to 19.9 percent of the general population in New York City.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Governor Cuomo: Happy Saturday. I know its Saturday because I don't wear a tie on Saturdays. That's why I can tell it is Saturday. People ask me often, "what do you think about our situation?" And I say I think about what I know. What does that mean? Good question. It means in New York what we've been doing is we follow the facts, we follow the data, we follow the science. We focus on what we know and the facts that we know, and we make our decisions based on the facts.
So, every morning we look at facts. Facts today are that the hospitalization rate dropped once again which is very good news. The total hospitalization rate has dropped, the intubation rate has dropped, the number of new cases per day has dropped down to 572, and those are new cases, people who walk in the door of the hospital or people who are in hospital and that test positive, but that is down to 572. You see it hasn't been that level since we started back March 20, March 21. So, that is welcome news. This is not welcome news and this has been heartbreaking every day - 226 deaths. 226 families. And you see how that number has infuriatingly constant. 226 is where we were 5 days ago. So, we would like to see that number dropping at a far faster rate than it has been dropping. And these are 226 people who lost their lives despite everything our health care system could do, right? That's despite the best hospital care, the best nursing, the best doctors, the best equipment. So, they are people who we know we made every effort possible to say. And to the extent there's some peace in that then we're looking for peace wherever we can.
The priority for us today is a dealing with a new issue that has come up which is truly disturbing. And that is the issue on how the COVID virus may affect a young people, very young people. Infants, children in elementary school. We had thought initially and again so many of what the initial information we had turned out not to be correct or turned out to be modified, but we were laboring under the impression that young people were not affected by COVID-19. And that was actually good news, right? The vulnerable populations were older people, people with comorbidity. But one of the few rays of good news was young people weren't affected. We're not so sure that that is the fact anymore. Toddlers, elementary school children, our presenting symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock like syndrome.
Now, these are children who come in who don't present the symptoms that we normally are familiar with with COVID. It's not a respiratory illness, they're not in respiratory distress, and I think that's one of the reasons why this may be getting discovered this far into the process. It's more an inflammation of the blood vessels which can then cause problems with their heart. And there are 73 cases that the Department of Health, Doctor Zucker, is now studying. But the illness has taken the lives of 3 young New Yorkers. So this is new and it's developing. The Department of Health has communicated with the federal officials, the CDC, and the CDC has asked New York to develop national criteria for this so that other states, other hospital systems, can also be checking into this and looking into this. Again, as it turns out, these children happened to have the COVID antibodies or be positive for COVID but those were not the symptoms they showed when they came into the hospital system. So it's still very much a situation that is developing but it is a serious situation.
The Department of Health is also going to be working with the New York Genome Center and Rockefeller University to conduct a genome and RNA sequencing study to see if there is something about these children that may present a definable situation. But rest assured the Department of Health is on top of it. This is the last thing that we need at this time with all that's going on, with all the anxiety we have, now for parents to have to worry about whether or not their youngster was infected. And again, symptoms that don't even see a like the symptoms we associate with COVID-19 so we still have a lot to learn about this fires and every day is another eye opening situation. But rest assured the Department of Health is doing everything that they can do.
I think it's fair to say that the New York State Department of Health is the first one that has been on this situation and again working with the CDC and whatever we find out we not only share with the public but we'll also share with other states and other hospital systems because it is very possible that this has been going on for several weeks and it hasn't been diagnosed as related to COVID. So again we'll keep you updated. I know many people are concerned about as they should be.
A priority that we've been working on throughout has been protecting our frontline workers. We're very aware of the sacrifices that our frontline workers are making so many of us can stay home and stay safe and we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to protect our frontline workers. We've been working with the health care workers, police officers, firefighters, EMT and our transit workers.
In New York we have to keep the public transit system operating. That's how many essential workers, frontline workers get to work. If we got to a situation where we had to close down public transit our hospital system would have suffered. That's how nurses get there. That's how the hospital staff gets there. But our transit workers had to operate that transit system right in the midst of this COVID virus and it never stopped. Bus operators, train operators, station cleaners, so while everyone was trying to get home, trying to stay safe, they were showing up for work every day to make sure that the people who didn't need to go to work or get to work.
We've already conducted the largest antibody test in the country. 15,000 people in that sample. What the antibody test tells you is who has been infected by the virus and then has the antibodies as they recover and that gives us a baseline, that 15,000 survey statewide, to compare other groups against so we know what the average infection rate is in different parts of the state. We can then compare groups to that baseline.
We recently tested the transit workers writ large who have been doing the operations of the transit system. We tested 1,300 so that's that a large size sample. 14 percent was the infection rate among transit workers and that's actually good news. We'd like to see 0 but 14 percent is below the average infection rate for New Yorkers so it means that the transit workers' infection rate is below the norm for New York City.
Within the transit workers it's a little higher with station workers than with bus operators or train conductors, assistant conductors, but all categories are below the New York City norm. The New York City norm was 19.9 so that is that is good news and that also affirms the news we've heard on the other essential workers, frontline workers.
Our health care workers, nurses, doctors were afraid that because they were literally in the emergency rooms that have a higher infection rate but turns out that's not true. 12 percent was the infection rate among those workers - shows that the PPE works when we talk about masks and gloves, et cetera. Not that nurses and doctors in those emergency rooms have fancier equipment or more sophisticated equipment. This is the same type of mask that they wear so it works.
New York Police Department had an infection rate of 10 percent. Fire department and EMT had an infection rate of 17 percent which is the highest of all those groups. We think it's higher because of the EMT workers, but again all below the New York City rate of 19.9 percent.
Another issue that we've been aware of and we're working on is the fact that poor and minority communities are suffering most. The numbers in the state are not nearly as bad as the disparity in many other states, but any disparity is bad. And that's what we have been focusing on here. We did surveys and data that show if you look at the 21 zip codes with the highest number of hospitalizations for covid, 20 of those 21 have greater than average African-American or Latino populations. 20 of 21 of those zip codes. So, there's no doubt that it is a problem and we've mapped this, and you can see exactly where people are coming from as they're walking into hospitals. Part of the new system that we've implemented through this is hospitals report nightly how many cases they have, where they come from, and we can now literally map the number of people and where they're coming from throughout the state. And then when you look into that information, especially in Brooklyn, and in the Bronx, it's clear that the communities are heavier minority population and heavier year low-income population. And when you compare that with the overall city rate, it makes the same point that hospitalization rate, infection rate among the minority community, among lower-income communities is higher than the average.
Unfortunately, in a cruel irony, this is often the case. When you look at disasters, emergencies, I don't care if they're hurricanes, floods, whatever they are. Cruel irony is, the poorest people pay the highest price. I've seen this across the country when I was at HUD. You're there to take care of a flood or a storm, it's the poorer communities that get wiped out first, right. It's the lowland, it's the land that tends to flood that it has the lower value and that's where the lower community, lower-income community tends to locate. We understand why, we understand the health disparities, we understand co-morbidities, but we also understand it's just not right. It is just not right and we have to address it. We saw the same thing in Hurricane Katrina. Those people who are on rooftops were not the wealthy white part of the community. They were predominately minority, they were predominantly low-income, those rooftops very often were public housing. So, this has been the pattern. Flint, Michigan, the people who were drinking water that was poisoned, they were low-income minority populations. If you even go back to 1927 the Great Mississippi Flood. Where does the Mississippi flood? It floods the low lands. It floods lower income communities. We get it, but we have to break the cycle.
New York, we're going right at finding the reasons for the disparity and resolving them. We're doing more testing in low-income communities and communities of color. We're do testing in public housing aggressively. Partnering with Ready Responders which is a group which is doing great work. We've delivered PPE equipment, masks over one million, hand sanitizer, etcetera to public housing.
And today we're launching a new initiative, again to address exactly this which is to expand access to testing in low-income communities and communities of color. We're partnering with Northwell Health which is the largest health system in New York and they're going to set up 24 additional testing sites at churches in predominantly minority communities. This is a different kind of partnership, it's creative, but it's necessary. We're working with both churches individually and association of churches and Northwell. Northwell will provide the testing in churches in lower-income communities and communities of color. The churches will help us outreach to the community to get people to come in and explain why it's important that people come in and get tested. And Northwell will do the testing. We have 24 sites in the New York City area. Some will be opening the week of May 12. Some will be opening the second week of May 19. But you see the coverage when we had the network of churches is very broad, again focused on these communities that we want to reach out to. These 24 new sites will be working with the current network of sites and we've already located many testing sites in minority communities, in low-income communities. But when you put the church based sites together with the drive-thru sites, together with the walk-in testing sites, and our sites at public housing, the coverage will be extensive.
So, the sites will be there. We now need New Yorkers to go get the tests. And I know, I do this with people all day long. "I feel fine, I feel fine." You can feel fine and test positive for COVID. You can - you can be asymptomatic and still have the COVID vipers. "Well I feel fine, what's the difference?" Because you can give it to someone else who will not feel fine. And you can give it to a person who's more vulnerable group, older person, person with an underlying illness, and they could be in serious trouble. So, you want to know if you have it not just for yourself but so you don't communicated to anyone else.
I want to thank our partners for who have been working on this. It's exactly what we want to do. All through this situation we said we don't want to just deal with this virus. We don't just replace what was there - we actually want to make sure that we build back better than before. I understand that this inequity, this disparity exists. I understand it existed for decades, I understand it exists all across the country. Been not New York. Not New York. It shouldn't be here. I want to thank our congressional leaders who are partners in this effort who have been very instrumental in organizing the churches and putting it together with Northwell Health, especially Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez and Congresswoman Yvette Clarke from Brooklyn and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who we're going to hear from in a moment.
I also want to thank the church groups. This is not in the normal line of business for churches to be setting up testing sites for a COVID virus. But I think it is the mission of the churches. They're there to serve the community, they're there to work with the community and meet the needs at that time, and this is the need at that time. So, they've been extraordinarily helpful and cooperative. I especially want to thank Reverend Rivera and Reverend David Brawley for coming up with the idea and then working with the other groups to get them to all participate.
So, we've never done anything like this before, but there are a lot of firsts for all of us in this situation. So I want to thank them very much for what they're doing here. And it's my pleasure to announce that we're being joined with Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who is a personal friend of mine, he's a great star for the state of New York. In Washington, his voice, his leadership has been pivotal not just for New York, but for the entire nation. And this is a time when we need the federal government to actually work, and work well and work efficiently and work effectively and work for the people, which show sometimes doesn't happen in Washington. And the people, the police, the firefighters, the people of this state couldn't have a better, more powerful advocate than Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. And the Congressman worked tirelessly to put together this arrangement that we're announcing today with the churches. Again, it is a different type of partnership. But we do what we have to do in New York, and the Congressman saw the need and he reached out to the church groups and brought them together to be where we are today. Congressman, thank you so for everything you do, but especially thank you for what you did to bring these church groups together with Northwell, so we could announce this initiative. Congressman, good to be with you.
Congressman Jeffries: Morning, Governor. Great to be with you and of course, thank you for the tremendous leadership that you have provided to the people of the Empire State and in fact the nation in so many ways during this moment of trial and tribulation. And I just appreciate the fact that your leadership has been evidence-based, data-driven, compassionate and comprehensive, and today's announcement is just another example that. We know that this is an extraordinary pandemic and it requires an extraordinary governmental response at all levels of government, it's all hands on deck at the city, the state and the federal level. And the New York delegation is committed to continuing to work with you to make sure that we can drive to federal resources into New York State to match the level of infection, pain, suffering and death that we've all had to endure. It's an all of government moment and, of course, an all of America moment, as you've encouraged all of us to dig deeper here in New York and throughout.
In that spirit, we know that the houses or worship, the spiritual community, has always been there to help the community get through the storm. These churches have been there through the crack cocaine epidemic to welcome people in while others were rejecting them. Our churches have been there, for instance, to address the high rates of gun violence in our community through gun buyback programs, taking thousands of guns off the streets in their congregation buildings. We also know that these houses of worships, our churches, our spiritual leaders, have been there to partner with the state and with law enforcement organizations like the Brooklyn District Attorney's office to begin again initiatives to address old warrants and summons and citations that can impact the ability of people from communities of color to be able to get all of the opportunities to benefit from our full economy.
So, now at this moment, thanks to their continued engagement and your leadership and willingness to partner, we can address this COVID-19 pandemic with these houses of worship and religious leaders who have the credibility, the authenticity, and the capacity to reach those in the community who need to be tested. At the end of the day, this is not over for any of us until it's over for all of us. As you've indicated, we know that communities of color have been hit particularly hard. We are disproportionately overrepresented amongst our essential frontline workers, live in dense environments, and have historically been under resourced throughout the nation.
This testing initiative will be incredibly essential to ensure we can turn the corner in communities of color such as those that I represent as well as those represented, of course, by great members of the delegation like Nydia Velasquez, Yvette Clarke, Greg Meeks, Adriano Espaillat and so many others.
So thank you, Governor, for your partnership. I thank EBC and the other church coalitions for their initiative and willingness to do what is necessary for us to confront this storm. The scripture says, "Weeping may endure during the long night, but joy will come in the morning." I'm thankful for your leadership, Governor Cuomo, thankful for the partnership with our houses of worship. We're all going to be there with the community until its morning time in the United States of America once again.
Governor Cuomo: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Congressman, so well said. Some people say the churches are closed. No, the churches are open. Churches never close. They're doing their work and they're performing their mission. And Congressman, big week for you. What you're doing in Washington is so important to all of us. This legislation that may be passed by Washington - getting this country the aid they need. Getting this state the aid we need. Pass legislation, did great for small businesses, et cetera. But I know your priority now is to bring funding for working New Yorkers, working Americans. The police, the firefighters, the healthcare that have gotten us through this. Making sure the state governments can function so we can do the reopening.
We couldn't have a better voice, a stronger voice, a more capable voice than yours in our delegation fighting for us and for the nation. You make the case for New York, you're making the case for America because we are just a micro chasm, New York. We did get hardest hit in the number of cases, but you address the need here, you address the need in America. God bless you, thank you very much for being with us. Thank you, Congressman Jeffries.
Congressman Jeffries: Thanks, Governor, God bless you.
Governor Cuomo: Thanks.
That's our congressional delegation, representing all New Yorkers who are tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving.
May 9, 2020.
Governor Cuomo Announces State is Helping to Develop the National Criteria For Identifying and Responding to COVID-Related Illness in Children. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-state-helping-develop-national-criteria-identifying-and-responding
State Department of Health is Partnering with the NY Genome Center and Rockefeller University to Conduct a Genome and RNA Sequencing Study to Better Understand COVID-Related Illnesses in Children
Hospitals Have Reported 73 Cases of COVID-Related Illness in Children with Symptoms Similar to Kawasaki Disease or Toxic Shock-Like Syndrome; The Illness Has Taken the Lives of Three Young New Yorkers
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that at the request of the CDC, the state is helping to develop the national criteria for identifying and responding to COVID-related illness. The State Department of Health is also partnering with the NY Genome Center and Rockefeller University to conduct a genome and RNA sequencing study to better understand COVID-related illnesses in children and the possible genetic basis of this syndrome.
There have been 73 reported cases in New York where children - predominantly school-aged - are experiencing symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome possibly due to COVID-19. The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers including a 5-year old in New York City, a 7-year old in Westchester County and a teenager in Suffolk County.
New Yorkers should seek immediate care if a child has:
Prolonged fever (more than five days)
Difficulty feeding (infants) or is too sick to drink fluids
Severe abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting
Change in skin color - becoming pale, patchy and/or blue
Trouble breathing or is breathing very quickly
Racing heart or chest pain
Decreased amount of frequency in urine
Lethargy, irritability or confusion
"We now have a new issue that has come up in the fight against COVID-19 that is truly disturbing and it impacts our youngest New Yorkers," Governor Cuomo said. "The Department of Health is currently studying 73 cases of children experiencing inflammation of the blood vessels as a complication of COVID-19, and three young New Yorkers have already lost their lives as a result of this illness. The CDC has asked New York to develop a national criteria for this illness, and the state is also working with the NY Genome Center and Rockefeller University to conduct a study to help us better understand it. This is a frightening new development, but rest assured we are doing everything we can to learn more and keep parents informed."
At the direction of Governor Cuomo, the State Department of Health has issued an advisory about this serious inflammatory disease, called "Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19," to inform healthcare providers of the condition, as well as to provide guidance for testing and reporting. Health care providers, including hospitals, are required to report to the Department of Health all cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with COVID-19 in those under 21 years of age.
Though most children who get COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms, in the United Kingdom, a possible link has also been reported between pediatric COVID-19 and serious inflammatory disease. The inflammatory syndrome has features which overlap with Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome and may occur days to weeks after acute COVID-19 illness. It can include persistent fever, abdominal symptoms, rash, and even cardiovascular symptoms requiring intensive care.
Early recognition by pediatricians and referral to a specialist including to critical care is essential. Molecular and serological testing for COVID-19 in children exhibiting the above symptoms is recommended. The majority of patients have tested positive for COVID-19, some on molecular testing for SARS-COV-2, others on serological testing.
May 9, 2020.
Statement From Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa on NY ON PAUSE Executive Order. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/statement-secretary-governor-melissa-derosa-ny-pause-executive-order
"NY ON PAUSE was not extended to June 6.
"Yesterday's Executive Order extended the underlying legal authority for the Emergency Order, but did not change the text of any of the directives in NY ON PAUSE and so the expiration date of May 15 still stands until further notice. At that time, new guidance will be issued for regions based on the metrics outlined by Governor Cuomo earlier this week."
May 10, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces New York is Notifying 49 Other States of COVID-Related Illness in Children. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-new-york-notifying-49-other-states
State is Investigating 85 Reported Cases in New York
Governor Proposes "Americans First Law" Stating a Corporation Cannot Receive Government Funding if it Does Not Rehire the Same Number of Employees Pre-Pandemic
Issues Executive Order Mandating All Nursing Home Staff Be Tested for COVID-19 Twice Per Week
Executive Order States Hospitals Cannot Discharge a Patient to a Nursing Home Unless That Patient Tests Negative for COVID-19
Department of Health and Human Services Has Distributed New Treatment Remdesivir to New York to Help Patients Infected with COVID-19 Recover More Quickly
Confirms 2,273 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 335,395; New Cases in 47 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced New York State is notifying 49 other states across the country of emerging cases of COVID-related illness in children. The State is currently investigating 85 reported cases in New York where children - predominantly school-aged - are experiencing symptoms similar to an atypical Kawasaki disease or a toxic shock-like syndrome possibly due to COVID-19. The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers and an additional two deaths are currently under investigation.
Governor Cuomo also proposed the "Americans First Law" which states that a corporation cannot be eligible to receive government funding if it does not rehire the same number of employees that the corporation had before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Governor also announced he will issue an Executive Order mandating that all nursing homes and adult care facilities test all personnel for COVID-19 two times per week and report any positive test results to the State Department of Health by the next day. The Executive Order also mandates that hospitals cannot discharge a patient to a nursing home unless that patient tests negative for COVID-19.
All nursing home and adult care facility administrators will be required to submit a plan on how they will accomplish this testing and a certificate of compliance with this Executive Order to the State Department of Health by Friday May 15th.
Any nursing home or adult care facility found to be in violation of the Executive Order may have its operating certificate suspended or revoked or may be subject to a penalty for non-compliance of $2,000 per violation per day. Additionally, any personnel who refuse to be tested for COVID-19 will be considered to have outdated or incomplete health assessments and therefore will be prohibited from working in the nursing home or adult care facility until testing is performed.
New York has the highest population of nursing home residents of any state in the country - 101,518 residents - and yet New York's percentage of deaths in nursing homes is the 34th highest percentage of any state.
New York continues to investigate the illness and get the facts quickly so we can help prevent any more children from getting sick.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
The Governor also announced that the Department of Health and Human Services is distributing a promising treatment called Remdesivir that has been shown to help patients infected with COVID-19 recover more quickly. The Department of Health and Human Services has sent New York enough antiviral to treat 2,900 people at 15 hospitals and will send more doses in the coming weeks to treat 500 more patients, including children, at additional New York Hospitals.
"We are learning new things about the COVID-19 virus every day, and one of the most frightening new developments has been cases of COVID-related illness in children that has already taken the lives of three young New Yorkers," Governor Cuomo said. "The State Department of Health is alerting all 49 states across the country about this evolving situation as New York continues to investigate the illness and get the facts quickly so we can help prevent any more children from getting sick."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,273 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 335,395 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 335,395 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,432
16
Allegany
36
1
Broome
373
1
Cattaraugus
60
0
Cayuga
58
5
Chautauqua
41
1
Chemung
131
0
Chenango
109
0
Clinton
76
0
Columbia
312
8
Cortland
29
0
Delaware
64
1
Dutchess
3,359
40
Erie
4,453
116
Essex
32
1
Franklin
17
0
Fulton
107
3
Genesee
172
2
Greene
206
2
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
79
2
Jefferson
68
1
Lewis
11
0
Livingston
102
1
Madison
251
1
Monroe
1,821
46
Montgomery
67
1
Nassau
38,217
189
Niagara
643
16
NYC
184,417
1,128
Oneida
660
22
Onondaga
1,265
47
Ontario
106
2
Orange
9,543
57
Orleans
126
4
Oswego
75
0
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,089
9
Rensselaer
409
2
Rockland
12,451
51
Saratoga
402
3
Schenectady
571
0
Schoharie
46
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
49
1
St. Lawrence
187
0
Steuben
227
1
Suffolk
36,702
241
Sullivan
1,093
22
Tioga
105
1
Tompkins
132
0
Ulster
1,450
10
Warren
207
5
Washington
206
2
Wayne
80
1
Westchester
31,294
207
Wyoming
77
2
Yates
21
1
May 10, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces New York is Notifying 49 Other States of COVID-Related Illness in Children. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-ne-1
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, State is Investigating 85 Reported Cases in New York
Governor Proposes "Americans First Law" Stating a Corporation Cannot Receive Government Funding if it Does Not Rehire the Same Number of Employees Pre-Pandemic
Issues Executive Order Mandating All Nursing Home Staff Be Tested for COVID-19 Twice Per Week
Executive Order States Hospitals Cannot Discharge a Patient to a Nursing Home Unless That Patient Tests Negative for COVID-19
Department of Health and Human Services Has Distributed New Treatment Remdesivir to New York to Help Patients Infected with COVID-19 Recover More Quickly
Confirms 2,273 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 335,395; New Cases in 47 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "New York State is investigating 85 cases of a COVID-related illness in children. Mostly toddler to elementary schools, it's symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, what they call Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome. This does not present as a normal COVID case. COVID cases tend to be respiratory. This presents as an inflammation of the blood vessels, sometimes inflammation of the heart."
Cuomo: "It's possible that these cases were coming in and were not diagnosed as related to COVID because they don't appear as COVID. But it is a situation that has taken the lives of three New Yorkers. There are two additional deaths that are currently under investigation as possibly related to the same situation. The New York State Department of Health is going to notify all the other state departments of health Again, we've recently found this and are investigating it, but it may be possible and it may even be probable that this is a situation that exists in other states and we want to make sure that they are where aware of it."
Cuomo: "Here's my suggestion to my colleagues in Washington -- the Americans First Law. If a corporation does not rehire the same number of employees, no government money. All the billions that they just gave out, if you don't rehire the same number of employees you had pre-pandemic, you have to return those funds. We're not going to subsidize you to lay off workers. If you can lay off workers and you're saving money by laying off workers, you don't need the American taxpayer to subsidize you. Otherwise you will never get those employment numbers back."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced earlier today New York State is notifying 49 other states across the country of emerging cases of COVID-related illness in children. The State is currently investigating 85 reported cases in New York where children - predominantly school-aged - are experiencing symptoms similar to an atypical Kawasaki disease or a toxic shock-like syndrome possibly due to COVID-19. The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers and an additional two deaths are currently under investigation.
Governor Cuomo also proposed the "Americans First Law" which states that a corporation cannot be eligible to receive government funding if it does not rehire the same number of employees that the corporation had before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Governor also announced he will issue an Executive Order mandating that all nursing homes and adult care facilities test all personnel for COVID-19 two times per week and report any positive test results to the State Department of Health by the next day. The Executive Order also mandates that hospitals cannot discharge a patient to a nursing home unless that patient tests negative for COVID-19.
All nursing home and adult care facility administrators will be required to submit a plan on how they will accomplish this testing and a certificate of compliance with this Executive Order to the State Department of Health by Friday May 15th.
Any nursing home or adult care facility found to be in violation of the Executive Order may have its operating certificate suspended or revoked or may be subject to a penalty for non-compliance of $2,000 per violation per day. Additionally, any personnel who refuse to be tested for COVID-19 will be considered to have outdated or incomplete health assessments and therefore will be prohibited from working in the nursing home or adult care facility until testing is performed.
The Governor also announced that the Department of Health and Human Services is distributing a promising treatment called Remdesivir that has been shown to help patients infected with COVID-19 recover more quickly. The Department of Health and Human Services has sent New York enough antiviral to treat 2,900 people at 15 hospitals and will send more doses in the coming weeks to treat 500 more patients, including children, at additional New York Hospitals.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good afternoon, let me introduce the people who are with us today for those of you who do not know who someone is. To my far right, Jim Malatras, PhD doctor. To my immediate right, Michaela Kennedy Cuomo, related to me, daughter, third of three only by age order. There is no order beside age, no preference, no degree of love, no estimate of any ability, just all equal within my eyes. To my left, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor. To her left, Dr. Howard Zucker. To his left Robert Mujica, Budget Director.
Thank you for being here today. Today is day 71 with a question mark. The number of hospitalizations today, down, great news. Number of intubations, down, that's great news. The COVID cases, which is a different problem than number of people who are in hospitals, this is how many new cases are showing up every day which has been still very high is down to 521 and that is down. 521 takes us right back to where we started this hellish journey, right? March 20th is when we did the closedown order. And where we are today is basically, with the number of new cases, is basically right where we were when we started. So, it has been a painful period of time between March 20th and May 9th. The optimist would say yes but it's only March 20th to May 9th. The pessimist would say but a lot of pain, a high cost, loss of life. The realist would be somewhere in the middle. But all of this work, all of this progress of turning that tide, of reducing the rate of infection, that's all thanks to New Yorkers and what New Yorkers did. Number of deaths, 207. Still terribly high but better. The number of deaths, 207, takes us back to almost where we started about a week in. As the number of deaths started to increase, you could see early in March, 27 deaths, then how quickly it went up: 38, 42, 56, 76, 101, 130, 207. So, just to give you a perspective of a where we are today versus where we were.
One of our top priorities is protecting people in nursing homes and seniors. This is where this virus feeds. It is where this virus started when it started in the State of Washington. We have implemented many safety measures, many of which have been difficult to implement but we did for health reasons. Restricting visitation except for end of life visits, this is a tough policy and I had serious qualms about it to tell you the truth. But the health officials were right. Yes, you want visitation. No, you don't want to walk a virus into a nursing home that could kill the person you're going to visit. PPE requirements, all staff have to be checked going to a nursing home every 12 hours. All facilities must notify families within 24 hours. Separate facilities, residents from staff in the event of an outbreak. We have provided them with millions of pieces of PPE equipment.
This is a national problem, right? Nursing homes, generally all across the country, have seen the COVID virus take a high toll. New York has one of the highest populations of nursing home residents of any state in the country, over 100,000 residents. But New York's percentage of deaths in nursing homes is the 34th highest of any state. So, if you look at the states and the percentages of people who died in nursing homes as a percentage of that death. New York is number 34. So, none of this is good news but just to give you context of what people are looking at. This virus uses nursing homes, they are ground zero. They are the vulnerable population in the vulnerable location, right? It's a congregation of vulnerable people. Today we're taking additional steps to protect seniors in nursing homes.
First, I want people to understand how a nursing home operates vis a vis the state. The most vulnerable population deserves the highest level of care, right, so the rule is very simple. If a nursing home cannot provide care for a person and provide the appropriate level of care for any reason, they must transfer the person out of the facility. If they can't find another facility, they call the state Department of Health. So what does this mean? If they don't have enough staff, if they don't have enough PPE, if their facility doesn't allow for isolation or quarantine - whatever it is, if they cannot provide the proper care, they must transfer the resident, period.
If they have a COVID positive person and they can't treat a COVID positive person, they must transfer the person or call the state Department of Health and the state Department of Health will transfer that person.
All nursing home staff must now be tested twice a week. That's not just a temperature check, that is a diagnostic test. We have the tests available. We have brought them online. The state has more testing capacity than any state in the country. They have to test their staff twice a week. That is a rule, it's not an "I'd appreciate it if you did."
Hospitals, going forward, cannot discharge a patient to a nursing home unless the patient tests negative for COVID-19. So, we're just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit. Period.
Remember, and I want the nursing home operators to understand this, we have alternative facilities for nursing home patients, COVID or non-COVID. Remember what we did here. We created 40,000 hospital beds because we had to. We had a 50,000 bed capacity system - the early projections were we would need 100,000 beds, 140,000 beds. We created 40,000 additional beds minimum. SO we have beds available. We also set up COVID only facilities. So we have available COVID only facilities that could accept nursing home residents. We're not reducing the number of hospital beds that we have available. We've always had more hospitals beds available than we've used - always. There has not been a day that we didn't have more beds available than we've used. So if a nursing home cannot take care of a person, we have facilities that can. I understand the nursing homes perspective, but if they cannot provide the appropriate care, they have to call the Department of Health and let's get that resident into an appropriate facility. I can't be more direct about that. We have available COVID only facilities upstate as well as downstate. So we have the facilities available. If there's any issue, the resident must be referred to Department of Health which will find alternative care.
If a nursing home operator does not follow these procedures, they will lose their license. Well, that's harsh. No. Harsh is having a nursing home resident who doesn't get the appropriate care. That's what's harsh - having someone's parent or mother or brother in a situation where they're in a facility, they can't even get a visitor, they're isolated, they feel alone, and they're not getting the appropriate care. That's what is harsh. If that's what happens, then that facility operator should lose their license. I have no problem with that. I was the attorney general. I did investigations of nursing homes. I have tremendous respect for what they do, but this is the essence of their responsibility and obligation. Again, we have the facilities. We have the beds. It's not like a situation where there are no options. We have options and we want to use them. So if there's any reason why you can't provide appropriate care let us know and we will put them in a facility that has it.
Also, this is an issue that people need to be aware of. New York State is investigating 85 cases of a COVID-related illness in children. Mostly toddler to elementary schools, it's symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, what they call Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome. This does not present as a normal COVID case. COVID cases tend to be respiratory. This presents as an inflammation of the blood vessels, sometimes inflammation of the heart. It's possible that these cases were coming in and were not diagnosed as related to COVID because they don't appear as COVID. But it is a situation that has taken the lives of three New Yorkers. There are two additional deaths that are currently under investigation as possibly related to the same situation. The New York State Department of Health is going to notify all the other state department of health. Every state has the department of health. They will notify their counterparts in the other states to put them on notice of this. Again, we've recently found this and are investigating it but it may be possible and it may even be probable that this is a situation that exists in other states and we want to make sure that they are where aware of it.
New York State Department of Health is also actively pursuing a new drug therapy. Remdesivir has been shown to have some positive effect and we are desperately looking for a treatment for this virus. So the CDC has started tests on this drug and New York State is working with HHS, Health and Human Services on the federal side, administering it to 2,900 people at 15 hospitals and we're looking for more doses to start with an additional 500 people.
This week is May 15. May 15 the pause order, the closedown order expires. We're looking region to region across the state as to where would be appropriate to reopen. This state we have a clear uniform set of criteria. It's the same all across the state, it's all science-based, it's all data-based and we'll look at those numbers, we'll look at those data points to see where it's safe to open.
Local governments should start to look at two things, citizens also. Of those factors that we look at, many factors are just the rate of spread of the infection and they just purely link to the rate of spread of the infection. Second set of factors looks to the capacity of local government. Do they have enough hospital beds open in case that infection rate goes up? Do they have the testing tracing isolation that we've all been talking about for weeks and weeks and weeks? Do they have that operation in place and do they have a compliance function in place where when we say manufacturing businesses can open but people must be six feet apart that they can actually monitor those businesses to make sure there is compliance?
So factor one are just the numbers, infection rate, et cetera, and everybody knows what that is in different parts across the state. Factor two is what local governments have to do to be ready and working together with their counterparts in that region and we'll be speaking to this more tomorrow because May 15 at the end of the week.
Also this week Washington is going to be considering additional legislation. That is essential to what we're all trying to accomplish here. The President has made it clear that the reopening is up to the states, is up to the governors, and I've been working with governors all across the country and by and large the people believe the governors are doing what they need to do.
But you can't ask someone to do that which they cannot do. You can't ask someone to do something that is beyond their capacity, beyond their limits. We can handle the reopening but every state, almost every state, has a significant financial problem because of the loss of revenue due to the economy. Just think of how a state works. You close down businesses, their income drops, they're not paying an income tax. The state's revenue drops proportionately and that's what is happening. You look at - our economy was doing great, really great, in this state, but then comes the COVID virus and the impact on our financial plan is about $61 billion. We then have to pay for all this COVID related work, all this hospital work and testing and everything that's going on. That's about another $5 billion per year.
We then have essential state agencies that are operating that also have taken a tremendous financial loss. The MTA operates the subways and buses, collects revenue from tolls when people go over bridges or through tunnels, but ridership is down 92 percent. Cars aren't driving and they're not paying their tolls. Tremendous revenue loss at the MTA. Port Authority, tremendous revenue loss at airports. The economic impact is beyond anything that any state can deal with. If the federal government doesn't help the states then you're forcing the states to cut funding and the places where the state normally funds will suffer.
If they force me to cut funding, I have to reduce the funding to schools, to local governments and to hospitals. Why would you ever want to reduce funding to these essential agencies at this time? Why would you make me allocated pain among schools, hospitals and local governments? It makes no sense at all. New York alone would need about $35 billion this year just to compensate for the total amount of losses. When you look at Washington and what Washington has done in the past legislation they've passed, when I say they treat it like pork barrel, why? I was in Washington for 8 years in the Clinton administration. Everything becomes a political game, every piece of legislation becomes a political game.
When they passed the past legislation, the money they sent to states was supposed to be for COVID. The whole exercise was this was to compensate for what happened during the COVID virus. They just played politics. Everybody put money in for their home state. When you look at what they actually accomplished, state's like Alaska got like 100 times what New York got for funding. We got about $23,000 for every COVID case, but state's that didn't have very many COVID cases also received a tremendous amount of funding. Our friends in Kentucky, $337,000 for every COVID case. We got $23,000. What they've done in the past made no sense. Also, what they've done in the past is what they always seem to wind up doing.
They bailed out corporate America, that's what they did. You look at the past legislation, they bailed out corporate America. This legislation, this week, going forward, let them fund working Americans because that's the need. You look at the past legislation, they funded hotels, restaurants, airlines, big corporations, public companies. Now it turns out they funded a tax break for millionaires. In the COVID response legislation, that's what they did and they didn't fund state and local governments.
Who do state and local governments fund? I fund police, firefighters, nurses, school teachers and food banks. You took care of corporate America and I don't even want to go through that, but now you're going to starve police and fire and hospitals and schools? Everybody applauds the health care workers, but now you don't want to provide any funding. Separate, last point on Washington.
Don't make the same mistake twice. Don't do what this nation did after the 2007-2008 mortgage crisis bailout where the government bailed out all these bankers and corporations that made a fortune running a mortgage scam. And then when the mortgage scam collapsed and the banks were going to go bankrupt, then the taxpayers had to come in and fund the banks. How does this make sense? The banks make all the profit on the way up. They then get into trouble on the mortgage fraud and we have to bail them out, and who's going to bail them out? The taxpayers are going bail them out. No, it's not that they reap all the profits on the way up and then the taxpayers provide a golden parachute on the way down. That has to stop.
There should be no subsidy for any corporation that lays off employees, period. Because I'll tell you what's going to happen. You will see corporations using this pandemic to lay off workers. That's what you will see. Because they're already saying it to the market analysts. "We're going to get the lean during this period. We're going to right size during this period." What does that mean? It means they're not going to re-hire the same number of employees. So, they're going to boost their corporate profits by reducing the number of employees. That's what it means. That's what it means. Government should not subsidize their reduction of employees and then when they reduce employees government is supposed to now subsidize those employees, unemployment insurance, etcetera. We did it once. We can't do it again.
Here's my suggestion to my colleagues in Washington, the Americans First Law. If a corporation does not rehire the same number of employees, no government money. All the billions that they just gave out, if you don't rehire the same number of employees you had pre-pandemic, you have to return those funds. We're not going to subsidize you to lay off workers. If you can lay off workers and you're saving money by laying off workers, you don't need the American taxpayer to subsidize you. Otherwise you will never get those employment numbers back. Because that's what's going to happen all across the country. And we keep going because we are New York tough. We are smart, united, disciplined, and we are loving.
Every time I say we are loving, I think people must think that is such a strange word for a government official to be talking about, that we are loving. You never hear government talking about loving. You never hear a lot of people talk about loving or love. But at this time, where we are all going through so much pain, and so much stress, and so much anxiety, and we're in a place where we've never been before. It's probably the one thing we need more than anything else. And it's not easy to talk about love. That's why I put it with New York tough. It's not easy to talk about love. I need love to show that vulnerability. It's hard to do that. That's why in some ways you have to be tough to be able to talk about love. But we all need it now because this is hard on everyone. It is hard, I don't care who you are. You can be a governor of the state, a health care worker, public employee, a daughter of a governor, a son, it is hard everyone. And love is the one thing that can make everything better and the one thing we need. When I said today is day 71 with a question mark. Because today is not really just day 71. Today is Mother's Day and that dwarfs all else, day 71, day 70, day 69, it's Mother's Day. And for me, you want to talk about love, the personification of love for me has always been my mother. My father was loving in his way, but he was not warm and cuddly kind of loving. My mother is just always been pure love, just pure sweetness, pure goodness, pure affirmation, unconditional love. Whatever you did. However stupid I was, and I can be pretty stupid. Just that total love of a mother. So, today more than anything else, mothers are special, they're special every day, but how about going through this. I'm talking about nursing homes, you have mothers in nursing homes, families can't get to see them.
Mothers have been doing double duty stuck at home, dealing with all that stress, all that situation. Mothers who have lost mothers, mothers who we've lost during this hellacious period where so many people have lost their parents. So, today is Mother's Day, first and foremost. And today is about love, and showing love, and expressing it, and appreciation for our mothers. And my mother, who I cannot see today, because I am in a position where I am exposed to too many people, and if I go see my mother, Dr. Zucker, blame Dr. Zucker, the health commissioner, says it will be risky for me to see my mother because I want to make sure that I don't infect her with anything. She's stronger than I am, and she's smarter than I am, but I just want to make sure that we don't do that. But I get to say happy Mother's Day to my mother, with my daughters, they're all here, through one means or the other, whatever this is, zoom this, zoom that. Happy Mother's Day to you mom. I miss you, I love you so, so much, I wish I could be with you, but I can't be, but I can't be because I love you. That's why I can't be with you, because I love you. But I know Maria's taking good care of you.
Matilda Cuomo: I miss you too. A lot. And your beautiful daughters.
Cara Kennedy Cuomo: Happy Mother's Day Grandma.
Matilda Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you Cara.
Governor Cuomo: You have Cara there, Cara's with Mariah. Mariah, you want to say happy Mother's Day, Grandmother's Day?
Mariah Kennedy Cuomo: Yes. Happy Mother's Day Grandma. I just was thinking today about this story that I love hearing you tell about how you met the pope, and how he looked you in the eye, took her hand in his, and he said la famiglia. It really captured your spirit. Thank you so much for teaching us what the meaning of family is, both from our own little brood, to the family of New York. I love you.
Matilda Cuomo: Very well said. Thank you.
Governor Cuomo: And I have Michaela here with me.
Michaela Kennedy Cuomo: Hi Grandma. Happy Mother's Day.
Matilda Cuomo: You're up at the capitol.
Michaela Kennedy Cuomo: Yes. But I'm so glad to see your face. We're so grateful to have such a caring Grandma, and one who was a great mother and role model to our dad and aunts and uncles, and such a great mother to so many children beyond our family, so thank you. Love you so much Grandma.
Matilda Cuomo: Thank for that. Thank you so much. I can't forget this, girls. I will never forget this.
Governor Cuomo: Well, you look good, this is going to be over, and then we're going to get back to life as normal and we're going to have fun. And then you can spend more time with me. I know i am your favorite. I know you don't want to say that because you have Maria there, but we'll get to spend time together, and we'll look back at this and we'll say that we're the better for it, right?
Matilda Cuomo: That's right. Time for everything, Andrew.
Governor Cuomo: Alright, well you have fun there, anything you need? Is Maria taking good care of you? You're sure Maria's taking good care of you?
Matilda Cuomo: I have your sister Maria here and I have beautiful granddaughters here as well, so I'm in good company. And all the children, all my grandchildren, I am so blessed, as many mothers today are, and I just thank you so much for everything you do, Andrew, to make families really better than ever. Thank you.
Governor Cuomo: Alright, you have a beautiful day. I'll see you soon. I know you want to see me because I know I'm your favorite deep down inside but you don't want to say it. I love you honey, I'll talk to you later.
Matilda Cuomo: Thank you very much, Andrew. Thank you.
May 11, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Three Regions of New York State Ready to Begin Reopening May 15th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-three-regions-new-york-state-ready
Finger Lakes, Southern Tier & Mohawk Valley Regions Have Met the 7 Metrics Required to Begin Phase 1 of Reopening Plan, Which Includes Construction, Manufacturing, Retail for Curbside Pickup, & Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing
The North Country and Central NY Close to Meeting All Metrics
Governor Cuomo Releases the "NY Forward Reopening" Plan, Available Here
Certain Low-Risk Business and Recreational Activities --including Landscaping, Gardening, Tennis & Drive-In-Movie Theaters -- Will Reopen Statewide on May 15th
Launches Regional Monitoring Dashboard -- Available Here
Announces Members of Regional Control Rooms to Monitor Regional Metrics During Reopening Process
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that as of today, the Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions have met all seven metrics required to begin phase one of the state's regional phased reopening plan when NYS on PAUSE orders expire on May 15th. If the trend continues, starting on May 15th, these three regions can begin opening businesses for phase one, which includes construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing. The North Country and Central NY regions have met 6 of the 7 metrics and could be ready at the end of the week. A guide to the state's "NY Forward Reopening" Plan is available here. The Governor also launched the state's regional monitoring dashboard, which is available here.
The Governor also announced that certain low-risk business and recreational activities will be ready to reopen statewide on May 15th, including landscaping and gardening; outdoor, low-risk recreational activities such as tennis; and drive-in movie theaters.
"We are starting a new chapter in the fight against this virus - we've worked together as a state to flatten the curve and the decline has finally reached a point where it is just about where we started this journey, so now we can turn to reopening," Governor Cuomo said. "As we approach May 15, we have put regional control rooms in place, which are made up of the top government officials and academic and healthcare professionals in that region, to watch the situation in each region develop and increase or decrease the activity and speed of reopening based on the metrics and guidelines. These control rooms are critical because we just made it over the mountain and nobody wants to go back to the other side now."
As we approach May 15, we have put regional control rooms in place, which are made up of the top government officials and academic and healthcare professionals in that region.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor Cuomo also announced the members of the regional control rooms that will monitor regional metrics during the reopening process. These regional control rooms will monitor the hospitalization rate, death rate, number of new hospitalizations, hospital bed capacity, ICU bed capacity, testing and contact tracing within its region during reopening and alert the state if the region's metrics no longer meet the reopening guidelines and adjust the reopening plan for that region accordingly. Members of each regional control room are available here.
Finally, the Governor confirmed 1,660 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 337,055 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 337,055 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,456
24
Allegany
38
2
Broome
378
5
Cattaraugus
61
1
Cayuga
60
2
Chautauqua
41
0
Chemung
131
0
Chenango
111
2
Clinton
76
0
Columbia
314
2
Cortland
29
0
Delaware
65
1
Dutchess
3,378
19
Erie
4,483
30
Essex
32
0
Franklin
17
0
Fulton
109
2
Genesee
173
1
Greene
206
0
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
81
2
Jefferson
68
0
Lewis
11
0
Livingston
102
0
Madison
251
0
Monroe
1,850
29
Montgomery
67
0
Nassau
38,337
120
Niagara
655
12
NYC
185,357
940
Oneida
669
9
Onondaga
1,287
22
Ontario
107
1
Orange
9,584
41
Orleans
130
4
Oswego
75
0
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,098
9
Rensselaer
411
2
Rockland
12,484
33
Saratoga
403
1
Schenectady
575
4
Schoharie
46
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
49
0
St. Lawrence
190
3
Steuben
228
1
Suffolk
36,911
209
Sullivan
1,109
16
Tioga
107
2
Tompkins
132
0
Ulster
1,454
4
Warren
217
10
Washington
210
4
Wayne
81
1
Westchester
31,384
90
Wyoming
77
0
Yates
21
0
May 11, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Three Regions of New York State Ready to Begin Reopening May 15th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-23
Finger Lakes, Southern Tier & Mohawk Valley Regions Have Met the 7 Metrics Required to Begin Phase 1 of Reopening Plan, Which Includes Construction, Manufacturing, Retail for Curbside Pickup, & Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing
The North Country and Central NY Close to Meeting All Metrics
Governor Cuomo Releases the "NY Forward Reopening" Plan, Available Here
Certain Low-Risk Business and Recreational Activities --including Landscaping, Gardening, Tennis & Drive-In-Movie Theaters -- Will Reopen Statewide on May 15th
Launches Regional Monitoring Dashboard -- Available Here
Announces Members of Regional Control Rooms to Monitor Regional Metrics During Reopening Process
Governor Cuomo: "This is the next big step in this historic journey. First phase was to figure out what we were dealing with because we had no idea. Scramble, frankly, to deal with the situation that dropped from another planet. Stabilize, ramp up the healthcare system, inform people, get people to understand what we were dealing with and control the damage. That's the mountain to me. We're now on the other side of the mountain. Next step, how do we reopen, how do we reopen intelligently and how do we reopen without taking a step back? What we have done thus far is really amazing. And it was because we were smart and because we were unified, and because we did that, we averted tragedy."
Cuomo: "We start with businesses that are more essential and pose a lower risk because once you say we're going to reopen they say, well what first? Well really everybody says, me first. After me first what businesses first? Those that are most essential and those that pose a lower risk because you can socially distance, et cetera. That's the matrix to make the decision and then businesses have to do their part also. It's not a one-sided affair."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that as of today, the Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions have met all seven metrics required to begin phase one of the state's regional phased reopening plan when NYS on PAUSE orders expire on May 15th. If the trend continues, starting on May 15th, these three regions can begin opening businesses for phase one, which includes construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing. The North Country and Central NY regions have met 6 of the 7 metrics and could be ready at the end of the week. A guide to the state's "NY Forward Reopening" Plan is available here. The Governor also launched the state's regional monitoring dashboard, which is available here.
The Governor also announced that certain low-risk business and recreational activities will be ready to reopen statewide on May 15th, including landscaping and gardening; outdoor, low-risk recreational activities such as tennis; and drive-in movie theaters.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning everyone. It's a pleasure to be here once again. Let me introduce the people on the dais. To my far right, Gareth Rhodes who is Deputy of Financial services in the State of New York, but he's been working with us on this since it began. Dr. James Malatras to my right, not a real doctor but a PhD doctor which still counts to be a doctor. To my left, Melissa DeRosa who is the top state official, appointed state official, pleasure to be with her.
It's a pleasure to be in Rochester today, really Irondequoit, but for most people they'll relate to Rochester. It's a pleasure to be in the Rochester Regional Health Facility and I want to thank the President and CEO Eric Bieber very much for having us here today. We are also joined by a number of elected officials, I want to thank them for being here. We have County Executive Adam Bello, pleasure to be with you. We have a great congressman, who had a really challenging position before he went to Congress because he was working in New York State government. But he's now in Washington and he's, we need his voice there more than ever. This is going to be a big week in Washington. We need to get the federal government to recognize the situation that state governments face and fund not just corporate America, but fund working Americans: police, firefighters, schoolteachers. They have yet to do that to the extent necessary and hopefully with the leadership of the House we will get that done this week.
We have Robert Duffy who is former Mayor of Rochester, my great Lieutenant Governor in the first term, pleasure to be with him as we go forward. We have elected officials with us today. I also asked elected officials across the state to join us to understand today's presentation. So we invited all the county executives, we invited all the mayors, to listen to this presentation because we start a new chapter today in many ways. It's a new phase if you will.
May 15 is the end of the statewide closure. May 15 is the end of this week. And the question is now going to shift more towards localities and regions across the state to make sure they are in a position to open, and the state will be working in coordination with them, but it's an exciting new phase. We're all anxious to get back to work. We want to do it smartly. We want to do it intelligently but we want to do it, and that's what this week is going to be all about.
In terms of where we are, total hospitalizations, we are down again. That net change is down again. The net change in intubations is down again. The number of lives lost, still too high, obviously, at 161, but better than it has been. So, we see all the arrows are pointed in the right direction. If you look at the number of new covid cases per day, about 488. That is just about where we started this horrific situation, right? So May 10, we're right about where we were in March 19 before we went into the abyss of the COVID virus. And when you see the number of lives lost, again, we are right about where we started before we really went into the heart of this crisis. And that's what it's been, it's been a crisis and a painful one. But we're coming out of the other side, so in many ways from my point of view, we are on the other side of the mountain, right? We got hit with a virus, we saw that incline, we saw the number of cases growing, we saw the number of deaths growing. We finally hit a plateau because we did what we needed to do and we changed our behavior and we closed down and we turned the corner and then we started to come down the other side and that was the decline. And now the decline has gotten to a point where we are just about where we started the journey.
So, to turn to reopening because we have abated the worst by what we've done and now we can intelligently turn towards reopening. And that's May 15, that's this Friday and local regions all across the state should start to prepare for it and people as well. That's what we want to start to talk about today
We are going to open when we are ready to open. What does ready to open mean? Well first, the number of hospitalizations, the infection rates, show decline. The federal government with CDC guidelines have laid that out and we think it's intelligent. We accepted the federal guidance, and we have testing, tracing in place in every local region. Testing and tracing, words we never really heard before this situation but now people are hearing them every day. Testing, we have the capacity to do enough tests, diagnostic tests, so you're positive or negative. Antibody tests - did you have the virus and have you resolved the virus? Have that testing capacity in place. Tracing, when you find a positive case trace back and then isolate the positive so you reduce the spread. Sounds simple, logistical goal nightmare, never been done before but that's what testing, tracing is all about, and that has to be done region by region. That capacity has to fit every locality.
We talk about being New York tough, what tough really means and the second word in New York tough is always smart and we have been smart through this and we have to continue to be smart. There are seven metrics, if you will, to get down to a quantifiable situation that each region has to look at. First are the infection rate, the number of hospitalizations, the 14 day decline in hospitalizations or under 15 new hospitalizations. that means you're controlling the hospitalizations. New hospitalizations under two per 100,000 so you know that the virus again is under control. Then number four, let's learn from the past. We had a true public health emergency that we were in danger of overwhelming our hospital capacity. Let's make sure we have 30 percent buffer in a number of available hospital beds in case that virus takes off again on you. You want to make sure we have hospital beds, so hospitals up to 70 percent, but 30 percent available hospital beds, 30 percent available ICU beds. Many of the people come in with this virus need an ICU bed and we want to make sure we have the ICU beds if we need them, God forbid.
And then testing capacity, so we know what the virus spread is doing. You don't know what the virus is doing unless you are testing. And then the tracing that fits with the testing program. We've been doing more tests than any state in the United States of America, so New York is way ahead and what we're doing on testing. We come up to speed faster. We're doing more tests per capita than any country on the globe, so we're doing very well in that regard, but you need in every region so it doesn't help the Finger Lakes if the Capital District has enough testing. You have to have enough testing and enough tracing in the Finger Lakes. So, each region has to have that in place and we understand that. We can measure this - this has always been about data and science for us, and you can look at it each individual region and you will know where each region is in the state by those criteria. So, you know what your infection rate is, you know what your hospitalization rate is, you know how many tests you need in place and tracers you need in place.
This can be a science and it can be measured. That's what we want to do. We want to demystify this entire issue. Sounds like a science fiction movie. I know. I feel like we've been living a science fiction movie but you can also study it and analyze it because we have a lot of experience now. We've been living with this for months; other countries have lived with this for months. So, let's learn. Let's be smart. That's who we are, and we can do that by each region in the state and you see depending on the region in the state, some regions are ready to go today - they just need to get some logistical pieces in order by the end of the week. Some places are very close, Central New York, just one or two criteria that haven't been met yet and you can do that with Long Island, New York City, all across the state. When we reopen, we're talking about a phased reopening, that's what everyone basically is doing. The question is moderating that phasing and doing it intelligently but starting with construction and manufacturing, retail, curbside pickup, agriculture, forestry and fishing. Then to phase 2, phase 3, phase 4, monitoring all along.
We start with businesses that are more essential and pose a lower risk because once you say we're going to reopen they say, well what first? Well really everybody says, me first. After me first what businesses first? Those that are most essential and those that pose a lower risk because you can socially distance, et cetera. That's the matrix to make the decision and then businesses have to do their part also. It's not a one-sided affair.
Businesses have to put safety precautions in place. We understand what has to be done, how the workforce has to have personal protection. They have to be socially distant. The workspace itself in some cases has to be adjusted, reconfigured. How do you have people work but they are six feet apart? They don't come to a cafeteria. There's no gathering. That's what we're trying to avoid, and then what processes do we have in place to test those employees or if the employee is symptomatic you can get them testing right away. You can then do tracing within the workforce.
You look at what's going on around the country. Just listen to the news - those meat processing plants where you have hundreds and hundreds of workers getting sick. We have an agriculture plant in Madison County that dozens of people got sick. It's not about the meat or the agriculture. It's the gathering. It's the density. That's what creates the problem, so learning those lessons and making sure we don't make those mistakes here.
On retail, all retail will be authorized to do curbside pickup or drop-off or in-store pickup. The essential retail which we've been, has been open all along will continue operating under the current protocols. We will also open certain businesses statewide which are low -risk: landscaping, gardening, low-risk recreational activities like tennis, drive-in movie theaters. Talk about going back to the future, back to drive-in movie theaters. I'm okay with that by the way.
Local officials, they have to do their work and their responsibility. Testing and tracing, they have to have those systems in place. We have to have a system in place regionally to monitor the infection rate with the hospitals. That connection has to be very close. They have to know on a day-to-day basis, if not an hour to hour basis. How many people are walking into the hospitals? I often do conference calls with all the hospitals in the state to find out exactly what is going on because they can tell you how many people walk through the door that morning or that afternoon and you want to be able to watch that and that has to be done on a regional basis. Businesses have to follow these new rules but we have to make sure they are following those rules also and you will get calls from employees who say I went back to work but by the way, I'm not comfortable. I don't think this is appropriate social distancing. I don't think I'm being given the appropriate equipment. Regional governments have to be in a position to respond to those.
The local governments have to be in communication with each other. We do this on a regional basis so there are a number of counties in that region but its one region and this virus doesn't respect county borders or state borders. Those governments have to be in contact with each other. If you know what's happening with your neighbor, you know what's happening in your district. So that has to be in place and that has to work and there's also something we call a regional control room which is made up of the top officials, government officials, academic officials, healthcare professionals that are watching the situation in that region develop.
You are going to increase activity. Depending on how intelligently you increase activity will be the possible effect on the spread of the virus. You need to know what the impact is. You need to know it in real time and you need to be in a position to respond. If it does not go well and you see that infection rate moving because the hospitals tell you they see an increase or because your testing data shows an increase, you have to be able to pull the plug. Or, slow down the increase in activity, and that's what we call the circuit breaker, right. So, you're increasing the activity, you're watching the infection rate, you're watching the hospitalization rate, you see that start to tick up, you have to have a circuit breaker. Slow down the activity level because you're increasing the infection rate and nobody wants to be there. That means you're going back to the other side of the mountain, and we've just made it over the mountain. Nobody wants to go back to the other side of the mountain.
So those regional control groups are very important. They have to be in place, they have to communicate, everyone has to know what each other's responsibilities are going forward. And we have been working with the regions all across the state over the past few weeks. We have those groups assembled, but this week, its Monday, before Friday, start talking, start communicating, understand who does what where. And that's true in regions all across the state. But I would urge them now to get on the telephone, or zoom, or whatever your preferred technology. Start talking, start understanding what happens on Friday, what do our numbers look like and let's get that all set sooner rather than later.
This is the next big step in this historic journey. First phase was to figure out what we were dealing with because we had no idea. Scramble, frankly, to deal with the situation that dropped from another planet. Stabilize, ramp up the healthcare system, inform people, get people to understand what we were dealing with and control the damage. That's the mountain to me. We're now on the other side of the mountain. Next step, how do we reopen, how do we reopen intelligently and how do we reopen without taking a step back? What we have done thus far is really amazing. And it was because we were smart and because we were unified, and because we did that, we averted tragedy.
Let's just remember where we were, right, remember where you were before you take a step forward. We had the virus that attacked us from Europe. The virus was coming, they now say, the experts now say, the geniuses now say, the virus came from Europe in January and February. And you know what? No one knew. No one knew with all the sophistication, with all the public health organizations, with that whole alphabet soup of agencies, nobody knew the virus was coming from Europe. Everybody's looking at China, and the virus is coming from Europe. Why? Because by the time we moved, the virus traveled from China to Europe. And then people are getting on flights from Europe coming to New York, 2 million travelers. 2 million travelers came from Europe. We had no idea. So New York, the east coast, people were landing at JFK. They were landing at Newark Airport, and that's where the virus came from, January, February, March. Nobody knew. European travel ban goes into effect mid-March, it's too late. It was already here.
Okay. Let's learn the lesson going forward. But that was the situation, those were the cards we were dealt. That's why New York had such high numbers, not because there's anything special or different about New York but because New York is where the European flights were coming in, and we didn't know. That was the situation that we were handed. They then say well, we project hospitalizations to be 120,000. I said 120,000, you know how many hospital beds in this state? 50,000. How can we have hospitalizations of 120,000 if we only have 50,000 beds, counting every bed in the entire State of New York? If you coordinate every bed you have 53,000 beds, and they projected 120,000. So, scramble to try to get more hospital beds. But, the only real course was you had to reduce the infection rate. How do you reduce the infection rate? You have to close down, stop people from spreading, stop gathering, stop density. We did that. Otherwise thousands more people would have died. Thousands more would have died. That is not rhetorical, that is not dramatic, that is a factual statement. Thousands more people would have died. We made that happen. We changed that trajectory. I didn't even know it was possible at one time.
When this started, we were at a truly bad and frightening place. If we didn't change the trajectory of this virus and we had 120,000 people show up at our hospitals, we would have made the situation in Italy look like a walk in the park. We were really at a very, very bad place. Again, through no fault of our own. The virus came from Europe, whoever would have figured that? Somebody should've, but above my pay grade. We changed the trajectory, dramatically by what we did. And that was smart. But we have to stay smart and we have to stay united. You look at what we've done.
New York, the cases are now on the decline. You look at the rest of the nation outside of New York, the cases are still on the incline. We took the worst situation in the nation and changed the trajectory. So, now we are on the decline. The rest of the nation, the cases are still on the incline. That is because of what the people in this state did. If you had said when we started this, yes we have more cases than anyone else, yes we had this European virus attack us and nobody expected it, but we are not only going to change our trajectory, we're going to change the trajectory more dramatically than any place else in the nation. And when you look at the nation compared to New York you're going to see us on the decline, the rest of the nation on the incline. People would have said it was impossible, but we did it. But we have to stay smart.
On this next phase, we have to learn from the mistakes that others have made. And we're not the first to reopen and that's a good thing because you can look around and learn. Other countries reopened too fast. They didn't have controls in place. And they reopened and then they had to slow down or they had to stop. We don't want to do that. We want to monitor our reopening, so if there's any change we can immediately calibrate it. Some states have not coordinated their actions. So, you have one county doing this, another county doing this. You've confused the general public and by the way, Monroe County cannot open in and of itself. Onondaga County cannot open in and of itself, Albany County cannot open in and of itself. There is no county by county plan here. It has to be coordinated and it has to be at least in a region and we did that, other states didn't. It was smart and as there's one set of rules and the public has to understand the set of rules.
Some states are opening even though they haven't met the CDC guidelines. Which I don't even know how that happens. Federal government says here are the CDC guidelines, which are basic health guidelines. Some states don't meet those guidelines and they're opening anyway. "Well there's a lot of pressure to open." I know, but pressure doesn't mean you act unintelligently, right. Some states open and then saw a rush of people from surrounding states. We've talked about that here. Concept of an attractive nuisance. Finger Lakes opens, you can't open up an attraction or site that will be attracting people from outside the region and then you have a problem you never encountered, right. So that's something to watch. And some places never really made the people a part of the plan and that is a fundamental mistake. Because this is not, we are not at a point where government is going to solve anything, frankly. This is people who are solving the problem.
Personal opinions opposed to facts. I did one thing right as governor that I'm proud of. I got the people involved in this situation to a greater degree than they had been involved probably in modern history. Probably in modern history. From day one, this was of such a magnitude that unless people engaged and understood and bought into this, government was impotent. State government can't enforce any of these things that we did. Stay in the house, close every school, close every business. State government can't enforce that. People had to understand the facts and people had to engage in governing themselves in a way they hadn't in decades. I don't know what happened. I'm still trying to figure out when government got to a place, or when society got to a place, where people would accept the lack of professionalism from the government - the lack of competence from elected officials. I don't know when government became so political and it all became about rhetoric rather than actual competence, but it happened somewhere along the way. That government could not handle the situation. People had to be engaged, people had to be informed. And that's the one thing I did right.
Now, they got engaged because it mattered. This is not an abstract issue. You're talking about people's lives and people's health and the health of their children. So they were interested. They were engaged. But they were also informed and I worked very hard every day to make sure they knew the facts. Trust the people - Lincoln, right? An informed public will keep this country safe. True and that's exactly what happened here. That's what we're going to continue to do. People need to be part of this. The whole plan that we're outlining today is all down. It's online, it's in a book. People need to understand exactly how we do this second phase just the way they understood how we were going to get over that mountain and how we were going to flatten the mountain, they have to understand now how we reopen. They have to be part of it. Understand the plan, hold me accountable. Hold me accountable. Hold your local officials accountable. But people have to be part of it. They have to know the facts and know what we're doing because it's going to come down to how people react and how people behave. If they understand what we're doing, they will do it. Just as I couldn't enforce any of this on day one, the local officials are not going to be able to enforce it, either.
Nobody's going to mandate personal behavior. People have to wear a mask, people have to be smart when they show up to work, people have to be smart when they shop. They have to understand this is not the floodgates are open, go back, do everything you were doing. Be smart. No one's going to protect your health but you. No one's going to protect your children's health but you. Well, children aren't affected. Oh, really? That's another fact that they're going to change on us. Now we're worrying about - we have 93 cases that we're investigating of young children who have COVID-related diseases.
So, this is about keeping yourself smart and keeping yourself healthy and keeping your family healthy. We'll do everything we can, but you have to be New York tough - smart is the first word after tough - united, disciplined, loving.
May 12, 2020.
Governor Cuomo Directs Hospitals to Prioritize COVID-19 Testing for Children. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-directs-hospitals-prioritize-covid-19-testing-children
State is Investigating Approximately 100 Reported Cases & 3 Deaths Related to COVID Illness in Children with Symptoms Similar to an Atypical Kawasaki Disease and Toxic Shock-Like Syndrome
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today directed hospitals statewide to prioritize COVID-19 testing for children displaying symptoms similar to an atypical Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome. The State is currently investigating approximately 100 reported cases in New York where children - predominantly school-aged - are experiencing these symptoms possibly due to COVID-19. The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers, including a 5-year old in New York City, a 7-year old in Westchester County and a teenager in Suffolk County.
"We have been behind this virus every step of the way and even as we are now beginning to see the numbers on the decline, the virus is still surprising us," Governor Cuomo said. "Initially we thought COVID-19 didn't affect children, and now we're dealing with a disturbing issue where we have about 100 cases of an inflammatory disease in children that seems to be created by the virus. New York is leading the investigation of this situation and we are advising all hospitals and medical providers to prioritize diagnostic testing for any children that are displaying symptoms of this illness."
New Yorkers should seek immediate care if a child has:
Prolonged fever (more than five days)
Difficulty feeding (infants) or is too sick to drink fluids
Severe abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting
Change in skin color - becoming pale, patchy and/or blue
Trouble breathing or is breathing very quickly
Racing heart or chest pain
Decreased amount of frequency in urine
Lethargy, irritability or confusion
At the request of the CDC, the state is helping to develop the national criteria for identifying and responding to COVID-related illness. The State Department of Health is also partnering with the NY Genome Center and Rockefeller University to conduct a genome and RNA sequencing study to better understand COVID-related illnesses in children and the possible genetic basis of this syndrome. New York State is also notifying 49 other states across the country of emerging cases of COVID-related illness in children.
At the direction of Governor Cuomo, the State Department of Health has issued an advisory about this serious inflammatory disease, called "Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19," to inform healthcare providers of the condition, as well as to provide guidance for testing and reporting. Health care providers, including hospitals, are required to report to the Department of Health all cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with COVID-19 in those under 21 years of age.
Though most children who get COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms, in the United Kingdom, a possible link has also been reported between pediatric COVID-19 and serious inflammatory disease. The inflammatory syndrome has features which overlap with Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome and may occur days to weeks after acute COVID-19 illness. It can include persistent fever, abdominal symptoms, rash, and even cardiovascular symptoms requiring intensive care.
Early recognition by pediatricians and referral to a specialist including to critical care is essential. Molecular and serological testing for COVID-19 in children exhibiting the above symptoms is recommended. The majority of patients have tested positive for COVID-19, some on molecular testing for SARS-COV-2, others on serological testing.
May 12, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Members of NY Congressional Delegation Will Introduce 'Americans First Law' to Stop Corporate Bailouts. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-members-ny-congressional-delegation
First Proposed by the Governor, the Legislation States that a Corporation Cannot Be Eligible for Government Funding if it Does Not Rehire the Same Number of Employees it Had Before the COVID-19 Pandemic
Renews Bipartisan Call from National Governors Association for Unrestricted Fiscal Support for States in Next Federal COVID-19 Relief Bill
Regional Monitoring Dashboard Showing How Many Metrics Each Region Has Met to Reopen is Available Here
Confirms 1,430 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 338,485; New Cases in 37 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that members of New York's Congressional Delegation - Representative Nydia Velázquez, Representative Thomas Suozzi, Representative Carolyn Maloney, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Gregory Meeks, Representative Grace Meng, Representative Eliot Engel, Representative Paul Tonko, Representative José Serrano, Representative Joe Morelle, Representative Adriano Espaillat and Representative Yvette Clarke - will propose the 'Americans First Law' to help prevent corporate bailouts following the COVID-19 pandemic. First proposed by the Governor on May 10th, the law states that a corporation cannot be eligible to receive government funding if it doesn't maintain the same number of employees that the corporation had before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Governor also issued a joint statement with NGA Chair, Maryland Governor Hogan renewing the bipartisan call from the National Governors Association for unrestricted fiscal support for states in the next federal COVID-19 relief bill. The next bill should focus on funding state and local governments, working families, state testing and tracing efforts and a real economic stimulus with no handouts to corporations who do not protect their workers and only enrich executives or shareholders.
This virus has taken a toll on all of us, but it has especially hurt working Americans and our front line workers - they are the ones who really need the financial help, not big businesses.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
"This virus has taken a toll on all of us, but it has especially hurt working Americans and our front line workers - they are the ones who really need the financial help, not big businesses," Governor Cuomo said. "I have spoken with a number of members of New York's Congressional Delegation and they have agreed to propose the Americans First Law to stop bailouts of greedy corporations that are not protecting and rehiring their employees once they open back up."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 1,430 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 338,485 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 338,485 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,479
23
Allegany
42
4
Broome
379
1
Cattaraugus
61
0
Cayuga
60
0
Chautauqua
42
1
Chemung
131
0
Chenango
112
1
Clinton
77
1
Columbia
314
0
Cortland
30
1
Delaware
65
0
Dutchess
3,399
21
Erie
4,530
47
Essex
32
0
Franklin
17
0
Fulton
135
26
Genesee
174
1
Greene
206
0
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
81
0
Jefferson
68
0
Lewis
11
0
Livingston
102
0
Madison
251
0
Monroe
1,890
40
Montgomery
67
0
Nassau
38,434
97
Niagara
671
16
NYC
186,123
766
Oneida
676
7
Onondaga
1,308
21
Ontario
107
0
Orange
9,632
48
Orleans
133
3
Oswego
76
1
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,098
0
Rensselaer
416
5
Rockland
12,504
20
Saratoga
407
4
Schenectady
581
6
Schoharie
46
0
Schuyler
8
1
Seneca
49
0
St. Lawrence
191
1
Steuben
229
1
Suffolk
37,062
151
Sullivan
1,119
10
Tioga
107
0
Tompkins
132
0
Ulster
1,465
11
Warren
221
4
Washington
210
0
Wayne
83
2
Westchester
31,472
88
Wyoming
77
0
Yates
21
0
May 12, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Members of NY Congressional Delegation Will Introduce 'Americans First Law' to Stop Corporate Bailouts. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-24
First Proposed by the Governor, the Legislation States that a Corporation Cannot Be Eligible for Government Funding if it Does Not Rehire the Same Number of Employees it Had Before the COVID-19 Pandemic
Renews Bipartisan Call from National Governors Association for Unrestricted Fiscal Support for States in Next Federal COVID-19 Relief Bill
Regional Monitoring Dashboard Showing How Many Metrics Each Region Has Met to Reopen is Available Here
Confirms 1,430 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 338,485; New Cases in 37 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "Never forget what we did here. What New Yorkers did, by their actions and their sacrifice. They saved lives. They saved hundreds of thousands of lives because that projection of what the virus was supposed to do was much, much worse than what it wound up doing. So we're making real progress, there's no doubt. But there's also no doubt that it's no time to get cocky, no time to get arrogant. This virus has deceived us every step of the way. We have been behind this virus from the very beginning. And it still surprises us."
Cuomo: "I want to propose a law that's very simple: Americans First. Americans first. Not America first, Americans first. Protect the worker. Corporation wants a bail out? Corporation wants money? Fine. But if you do not rehire the same number of employees, give the money back. If you do not rehire the same number of employees, no government gift and bail out for you. That's the Americans First law. Very simple but undeniable."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that members of New York's Congressional Delegation - Representative Nydia Velázquez, Representative Thomas Suozzi, Representative Carolyn Maloney, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Representative Gregory Meeks, Representative Grace Meng, Representative Eliot Engel, Representative Paul Tonko, Representative José Serrano, Representative Joe Morelle, Representative Adriano Espaillat and Representative Yvette Clarke - will propose the 'Americans First Law' to help prevent corporate bailouts following the COVID-19 pandemic. First proposed by the Governor on May 10th, the law states that a corporation cannot be eligible to receive government funding if it doesn't maintain the same number of employees that the corporation had before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Governor also issued a joint statement with NGA Chair, Maryland Governor Hogan renewing the bipartisan call from the National Governors Association for unrestricted fiscal support for states in the next federal COVID-19 relief bill. The next bill should focus on funding state and local governments, working families, state testing and tracing efforts and a real economic stimulus with no handouts to corporations who do not protect their workers and only enrich executives or shareholders.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here, with ASL interpretation available on YouTube here and in TV quality format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Pleasure to be with all of you today. Let me introduce who we have with us. To my far right, we have, we have a very loud noise that is very disturbing. Has nothing to do with the, Gareth Rhodes, however, who's a big part of our effort here. To his left, my right, Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor. To my left, we have Mr. James Malatras, Ph.D. doctor. It's a pleasure to be in Binghamton today at Binghamton state university, brand new school of pharmacy. President Harvey Stenger, thank you very much for having us. It's a beautiful new facility, pleasure to be here. We're getting a little bit of a late start, I wanted to hear the Senate briefing this morning on the COVID virus, see if there was any new thinking. Let us give you the facts and some of the new thinking that we're doing here in New York.
Number of total hospitalizations in the state is down again. That is good news. The net change in hospitalizations, three-day rolling average, little more accurate, that's down. The intubation rate is down. Look, that's just about where we were when we started. Literally the closedown and literally.
Number of lives lost, about 195 yesterday. That is the most devastating number that we have to deal with every day. It's actually up a little bit from the day before. But overall, the trend is down. And if you look at the number of lives lost, again, we're just about where we were when we started before we saw the onslaught of the virus and then dealt with it and changed the trajectory of the virus. Never forget what we did here. What New Yorkers did, by their actions and theirsacrifice. They saved lives. They saved hundreds of thousands of lives because that projection of what the virus was supposed to do was much, much worse than what it wound up doing. So we're making real progress, there's no doubt. But there's also no doubt that it's no time to get cocky, no time to get arrogant. This virus has deceived us every step of the way. We have been behind this virus from the very beginning. And it still surprises us.
We thought, initially, that it didn't affect children. We're now dealing with an issue that's very disturbing. We have about 100 cases of a inflammatory disease in young children that seems to be created by the COVID virus. And this is something that is just starting and New York is leading the investigation of this situation. The symptoms of the children are analyzed to the Kawasaki disease, or toxic shock-like syndrome, but it's an inflammation of the blood vessels and can affect the heart. We've lost three children, 5-year-old boy, 7-year-old boy, an 18-year-old girl. The ages of the children affected in these 100 cases is all across the board, as you can see. Less than one year old, predominately 5 to 14, but we lost a young lady at 18 years old and we have some cases up to 21 years old. So this is a truly disturbing situation and I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned about this and they should be. If we have this issue in New York, it's probably in other states, and probably hasn't been diagnosed yet in other states. Because again, these children don't present the usual COVID symptoms. They're not respiratory symptoms. And I think that's one of the reasons why people haven't found it yet. But they know what the symptoms are, if your child has the symptoms that they are saying are symptoms that should cause an alert. We need parents to be advised. We also have the state Department of Health that is telling hospitals and medical providers to prioritize testing for the COVID virus for any children that are demonstrating these symptoms.
At the same time, while we're not cocky or arrogant, we're talking about reopening. We have to get back to work. We all do. We talk about New York being tough but tough also means smart and we have been smart all through this.
You look at where we are today. The curve in New York - New York is on the decline. You take New York out of the numbers for the rest of the nation, the nation is still on the incline in the number of cases. So we have been smart. We got hit worst because the virus was coming through Europe. Nobody even told us. Nobody even knew. But we took the worst and we turned the curve and we are, we have a better curve now than you see in many other states and certainly as the United States as a whole.
So reopening, yes. But it still means we have to be smart. What does smart mean? It means following the CDC guidelines to begin with. Follow the data. Follow the science. We said that from day one. Don't fall subject to a motion and politics. Stay with the science and the data. Listen to Dr. Fauci. Even this morning he said if you don't follow the CDC guidelines you run a real risk of triggering an outbreak that can get out of control.
What is out of control? Out of control is when the number of people infected going to your hospital system overwhelm your hospital system. That is what happened in Italy. That was our great fear here in New York. But that is a very real situation that people have to watch from.
Smart means learning from the mistakes of others. We're not the first one down this path. Study what China did and South Korea did and Germany did. Look at what's happening in the other states and inform your actions by what happened in other places that went through this same process and you'll see many of the other places rushed reopening and actually had to backtrack and then close again. That's the last thing that we would want here in New York.
Smart means regional management, local government managed and engaged and citizen participation because this all turns on what people do. This is not about government. Government can offer advice and suggestions and guidance but it's about what people do. Why did we turn the curve in New York? Because people acted responsibly and intelligently.
And we also have to do it in a way that is totally transparent. I want every New Yorker to know all the facts because it's up to New Yorkers. It's up to the people and how they respond. Then give them the information and trust their judgment. Trust their judgment. What did we learn here? That when people are informed of facts that they actually believe, which is saying something, but if you give them the real facts that they believe a real facts and not political facts, not partisan facts, not spin, not hype, not some rhetoric from a politician who's trying to get something for themselves. If you give them the real facts they will respond intelligently but you have to give them the real facts and that's transparency. That's what smart means and that's what we're doing here in New York.
All the facts are on the website. All the facts for your region are on the website. You know exactly what I know. I don't know anything more than I am telling the people of the State of New York and you can see the changes in your region. Capital District in New York changed overnight. You can see the changes in the direction in your region.
And then what are we doing? We have our hand on the reopening valve and we're turning the reopening valve and we're starting to reopen. But we're calibrating it and we're monitoring it. The first monitoring device is the diagnostic testing - positive or negative. People need to go. People need to be tested. We have more tests than ever. We're testing more than any other state in the United States. We've come up to speed faster than any other state. People have to take the test. We have it available in drive throughs, in pharmacies, and you watch that testing rate day to day to see if the testing rate is going up, more people testing positive. Then once you test then comes you're tracing, then comes your isolation operation, et cetera.
Second monitoring device as you're doing antibody testing. The antibody testing tells you how many people have had the virus and have recovered from the virus. There is a little lag in the antibody testing because it's really telling you who was infected 2 weeks ago or 2.5 weeks ago. But if you see that number going up you know more people have gotten infected. You then have the hospitalization rate which is very important. You know every day now because of the system we put in place how many people walked into a hospital with COVID. Watch that hospitalization rate. If you see the hospitalization rate going up, you have a problem. And watch the hospitalization rate in terms of the capacity of the hospitals. That's what we've been dealing with for the past 2 months. We've said you have to have a 30 percent buffer in the capacity of hospitals. So, if that infection spikes you have a 30 percent buffer in terms of capacity. But watch that hospitalization rate and they will then give you the infection rate - the RT. They will tell you, those gauges will tell you the rate of transmission from one person to another person. And if one person is infecting more than 1 of the person, 1.1, that's the outbreak that Dr. Fauci was talking about. And you can compute these rates, you can monitor exactly what you are doing. There is a science to this and there is a methodology to this that erases all the theories, right?
Everybody has a theory. "I think this. I think that I think that. I think warm weather is going to make a difference. I think God is going to do something." Yes, I know everybody has a theory. Just tell me the facts. Tell me the numbers and that's what I want to tell the people of this state. And respond to the facts, local region then manages this system. They monitor those numbers we're talking about. They control that valve. They make sure businesses are complying with the safety precautions when the businesses go back. Every business is going to say "don't worry, don't worry, I'll have safety precautions, I'll socially distance, I'll give equipment." Yes, are they actually doing that? Are we staying away from large gatherings? Are we making sure? That's up to the local government.
And then built in is circuit breaker that when those gauges hit red turn off the valve. Hopefully you don't get to that point because you have been monitoring, and you calibrate, and you adjust the valve a little bit at the time. But worst-case scenario you turn off of that. That's what other countries have had to do when they open that reopening too quickly. No other state had this accurate or transparent a monitoring mechanism. But I want people to know exactly what is going on in your community day to day because you are the ones who are determining what happens in your community - nobody else. No governor, no senator, no elected official, it's what people do. It's what our neighbors do. The regional control group are the top elected officials, academic officials, top health care professionals in that region in that community, and they're the ones who are going to have to make it work. But this will be online every morning or every day and everyone can see exactly what is happening literally day to day. No other state has the system. No other state is as transparent. No other state is gathering local data so it can present data state wide every day. We're doing it because the secret of our success has been exactly this. The secret of our success, the one thing I did right, was communicate to people and trust people that with the right information they will might make the right decisions. This is the most advanced way in the nation to give people, to give citizens, the information they need to lead their lives correctly. And that will that will be online in the next couple of days. But Friday is May 15th is the opening date and this will be online.
To act smartly, right. We all have heard Washington say many, many times the governors are in charge of reopening. Thank you very much. So, the governors are in charge of reopening, but that doesn't mean the states are on their own, the governors are on their own. We need federal help. We need federal assistance and they're talking about passing a piece of legislation in Washington this week. It has to be a smart piece of legislation this time. What does that mean? No handouts to greedy corporations, no political pork, and no partisanship. Sometimes, there has to be a time in history when the federal government is willing to stop playing partisan politics. And if it's not through this experience, through this crisis, it will never be. That's the first definition of smart for the federal government. The bill has the fund state and local governments. It has to fund working families. It has to fund state testing and tracing.
Everybody talks about testing and tracing. It's up to testing tracing. It is, no one has done it before. No state has this testing capacity. No state has this tracing capacity. We have to build it. We can do it, but it's a heck of a logistical endeavor and we need funding to do it. And we need a real economic stimulus. This economy has been damaged through no fault of anyone. Through an act of God with this covid virus. But to get this economy back up and running we're going to need an intelligent stimulus bill from Washington.
When I say no pork barrel, what does that mean? When they pass a piece of legislation in Washington every senator sees it as their opportunity to bring home bacon to their state. This is supposed to be about the covid virus and repairing damage from the covid virus. Keep it about the covid virus. Last bill when they did it, they were talking about providing money to states that didn't really have a major covid problem. So, how would the state spend the money? They were talking about building a new state capital in some states, because they didn't have enough covid cases to justify the federal allocation. So, they were looking for ways to spend the money. How ludicrous is that, right? This is somebody's money. This is a tax payers' money. They worked hard. They're willing to help solve the problem of covid, but keep it about the covid virus.
Second, I understand businesses need to recover. This doesn't have to be a giveaway to the rich millionaires who are doing just fine anyway. And it doesn't have to be a giveaway to big business. It shouldn't be that another episode in history where somehow the rich figure out a way to get more assistance. When it's supposed to be about helping average Americans and that's the people who really need help here, are the working families. Families that go paycheck to paycheck. They're the ones who are struggling and the essential workers who have been so great for so long. Police officers, firefighters, nurses, school teachers. The people who literally need food. I mean, I have people literally saying, "I need food to feed my family." We have unprecedented demand at food banks. Those are the people who really need help and those are the people who our state government funds.
New York State, we know what happened to our economy. We know what our budget looks like. We need $61 billion in federal support or we will wind up aggravating the situation, because when you don't fund the state, who does the state fund? State funds schools, local governments, and hospitals. You really want New York State to turn around and have to cut schools and cut local governments? You know who local governments are? That's police, firefighters. You want me to cut hospitals? Hospitals are the nurses and the doctors who just got us through this and everyone celebrates as heroes. If you don't fund the state that's who you're cutting in terms of finances. Now, this is not a red issue, blue issue. Yes, I'm a Democrat, but this is not about politics. I have Democrats, I have Republicans in my state. I have Independents, I have short people, I have tall people. In New York, we have everything. If you're going to be an effective statewide leader, forget red and blue. It does not work, and every state, red states, blue states, they all need funding. You put the governor's in charge, the states are heading the reopening, they need funds to do it. There's an organization called the national Governors Association, NGA. Democratic and Republican governors. It's headed by a Republican governor, Governor Hogan. I'm the vice chairman, I'm a Democrat. We do a joint statement today, saying states need funding, and not pork barrel funding and not funding that flows through the states but gets to their special interests. That's not what we want. We want funding to allow us to do our job. Democrats and Republicans working together are going to make this statement, and Washington should listen.
The federal bill should also be responsive to working families. What are the problems that working families are facing? They come to me with? "I can't pay my rent. I can't pay my mortgage. I'm afraid that once this forbearance period ends, the bank is going to send me 3-months' worth of mortgage payments, I'm not going to be able to pay. I'm afraid that once this forbearance period ends. I'm going to get a bill for 3 months of back-rent, and I can't pay it and I'm going to be evicted." That's what real families are talking about now. They're afraid that they're not going to get their jobs back. The funeral costs for families - funeral costs are devastating. That's reality for working families and your homeowners in the state and many of the states affected by COVID Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Michigan. Same state that have to go COVID problem, that just were have been additional tax from Washington when they repealed what's called SALT - state and local tax deduction. It was a theft by Washington to increase taxes on certain states - New York is one of them, Massachusetts is one, California's one. And it hurt homeowners, because you can't deduct your state and local taxes anymore. It was punitive. It was political. It was wrong. You want to help taxpayers? You want to help homeowners? You want to help the places that were hit by COVID? Repeal SALT, and that's what should be done in this bill.
And you also have to fund state testing and tracing. We can put together the operation. It's not going to be easy. It's going to entail thousands of people in this state to test and trace. But we need funding from Washington to make that happen. And if you want to be creative and aggressive and smart, what we need more than ever, the bill shouldn't just reopen America. Now was a chance to actually reimagine America, okay? You need to stimulate the economy. You need to create jobs. You need to get people back to work. Now is the time to invest in building and rebuilding. Invest in public infrastructure. Build airports, bridges, mass transit. Build a public health infrastructure so we can handle a situation like this next time.
The investment in public infrastructure is long overdue. They've talked about this for years. There are dozens and dozens of reports that will talk about the bad shape of our roads and our bridges and how bad our airports are compared to international airports and we haven't built a new airport in the country in 25 years? While all the other countries are building new airports? Now is our time to do it. Every president - Democrats, Republicans they have all said the same thing. "Our public infrastructure is crumbling. We need to create jobs. We should invest in public infrastructure." Now is the time to do it. And if not now, when? If you can't agree on a stimulus for the economy to rebuild this country today, when are you ever going to do it?
Last point on this, no bail out boondoggles. Do not betray the American people again. Why do I say again? Because I went through the 2008 bail out, which was the bail out for the banks after the mortgage crisis. I went through that. They bailed out the banks. You know what the banks did? They gave it to their employees and they got rich. You know who paid the bill? The American taxpayer paid the bill and the homeowner paid the bill when the equity in their home disappeared overnight. Everybody said oh, we can't let the banks fail so the taxpayers had to bail out the banks. The banks turned around and gave bonuses to their executives. I know because I was the Attorney General of New York at the time. I had to try to clean up the mess. I had to go after the banks for the bail out that Washington gave them that they were giving in multimillion dollar bonuses to their executives. The same executives who had created the mortgage scams in the first place. Don't do it again.
I'll tell you today what the new scam is going to be. The new scams is going to be these corporations are going to use this pandemic to lay off workers. That is what they're going to do. They're already saying it. They do these analyst calls where they tell the analysts why their stock value is going to go up. What they're saying is we're not going to hire the same amount of workers. We're going to rehire fewer workers, our profit margin goes up, our dividend goes up, our stock value goes up.
Yeah, except the American workers are left on the beach. That's what they are going to do. Mark my words today. I want to propose a law that's very simple: Americans First. Americans first. Not America first, Americans first. Protect the worker. Corporation wants a bail out? Corporation wants money? Fine. But if you do not rehire the same number of employees, give the money back. If you do not rehire the same number of employees, no government gift and bail out for you. That's the Americans First law. Very simple but undeniable.
I've spoken to a number of members of the Congressional delegation for New York. They're going to propose the Americans First law. No bail out boondoggles. I'm excited about that. I've also spoken to the Congressional delegation about what I just talked to you about, what we need in this bill. What the state and local governments need, what working families need, and I believe our delegation actually has an opportunity to lead the way. It's not just New York that's tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving, but we have a federal government that gives us a United States of America that is tough, smart, united, disciplined, and loving.
Let me leave you with one point of personal opinion. Yesterday - personal opinion so it's worth what you're paying for it and since you're not paying for it, it's easy. Yesterday I went for a walk with my daughter - I had to take the dog for a walk. Even the dog is getting a little out of sorts. I think he has COVID virus himself, the dog.
So, we take the dog for a walk with my daughter, Michaela. She's my young one, she's 22 years old. So, we're going for a walk and everybody's wearing masks and a lot of people wearing gloves, which is very smart. One fellow says to me, "I wear the gloves because when I wear gloves I don't touch my face as much." Which is interesting because you don't want to touch your face, right? You don't want to touch your mouth, your noses, your eyes even.
So, it's a pleasant day, going for a pleasant walk. We come across one fellow who is not wearing a mask. I said something to the gentleman about the mask. We started to have a discussion about wearing masks and not wearing masks. And we were in a little bit of a disagreement, and the conversation got a little tense so I stopped the conversation because otherwise I'd get a lecture from my 22-year-old Michaela. I don't lecture Michaela, Michaela does lecture me. So, I let it alone, and we finished the walk and it was all very nice. Not that she gave me any credit for leaving the conversation alone.
But, I did want to make a point to that gentleman that I didn't get to make, but it's a sort of a universal point. People send me masks now, and some really beautiful masks. Some are personalized, this one says Governor Cuomo, was made for me. Some say New York Tough, beautiful colors. I have masks sent to me from sports teams, I have Buffalo Bills masks, I have a Giants, Jets, Mets, Yankees mask. This one sent to me says E Pluribus Unum, which I love. Out of many, one. But, any mask, even if it says nothing, it does say something. Doesn't have words on it, but it makes a statement.
When you wear a mask, you say, I respect you. That's what the mask says to everyone you walk past. I respect you. I respect you. I respect your health, I respect your privacy, I respect your space, I respect you. I can do anything I want with myself. This is America. But I respect you. And out of respect for you, I wear this mask. This mask says I respect the nurses and the doctors who killed themselves through this virus to save other people. And I respect the nurses and the doctors, so I'm not going to infect anyone, or allow anyone else to be infected unnecessarily so I don't cause more stress on the nurses and the doctors. This mask says, I respect the essential workers who get up every day, and drive the bus, or drive the train, or deliver the food, or keep the lights on so that I can stay home and I can stay safe. It says I respect others. And I respect you. And that is a statement that we should all be willing to make any day. But especially in the middle of this. Yes, I want individuals to be informed so they make the right decision, but it's about us at the end of the day, right. It's a mindset that says it's not about me, it's about we. And we have reciprocal responsibilities, and a collective and a mutuality that says, I'm going to respect you, and help you, and you're going to help me, and respect me. That's how your battle community spread, with community unity. That's what the mask says.
May 12, 2020.
Video, Audio & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Urges New Yorkers to Wear Their Masks Out of Respect For the Nurses And Doctors Who Are Fighting to Save Lives. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-urges-new-yorkers
Governor Cuomo: "This mask says I respect the nurses and the doctors who killed themselves through this virus to save other people. And I respect the nurses and the doctors, so I'm not going to infect anyone, or allow anyone else to be infected unnecessarily so I don't cause more stress on the nurses and the doctors."
Cuomo: "This mask says, I respect the essential workers who get up every day, and drive the bus, or drive the train, or deliver the food, or keep the lights on so that I can stay home and I can stay safe. It says I respect others. And I respect you. And that is a statement that we should all be willing to make any day. But especially in the middle of this."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo urged New Yorkers to wear their masks in public out of respect for the nurses and doctors who are fighting to save lives and for the essential workers who continue showing up to work amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
When you wear a mask, you say, I respect you. That's what the mask says to everyone you walk past. I respect you. I respect you. I respect your health, I respect your privacy, I respect your space, I respect you. I can do anything I want with myself. This is America. But I respect you. And out of respect for you, I wear this mask.
This mask says I respect the nurses and the doctors who killed themselves through this virus to save other people. And I respect the nurses and the doctors, so I'm not going to infect anyone, or allow anyone else to be infected unnecessarily so I don't cause more stress on the nurses and the doctors.
This mask says, I respect the essential workers who get up every day, and drive the bus, or drive the train, or deliver the food, or keep the lights on so that I can stay home and I can stay safe. It says I respect others. And I respect you. And that is a statement that we should all be willing to make any day. But especially in the middle of this.
Yes, I want individuals to be informed so they make the right decision, but it's about us at the end of the day, right. It's a mindset that says it's not about me, it's about we. And we have reciprocal responsibilities, and a collective and a mutuality that says, I'm going to respect you, and help you, and you're going to help me, and respect me. That's how your battle community spread, with community unity. That's what the mask says.
May 13, 2020.
ICYMI: Governor Cuomo's Op-Ed in the Washington Post -- Andrew Cuomo: What Washington Must Do to Protect Workers. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/icymi-governor-cuomos-op-ed-washington-post-andrew-cuomo-what-washington-must-do-protect
Today, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo urging Washington to make corporations ineligible for government funding if they don't maintain the same number of employees they had prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, Governor Cuomo announced that members of the New York Congressional Delegation will propose the 'Americans First Law' to help prevent corporate bailouts following the pandemic. The text of the op-ed that was published by The Washington Post is available here.
Full text of the op-ed is available below:
The covid-19 pandemic has thrust us all into unprecedented circumstances, even more dire than the economic collapse of the Great Recession. As the nation plots a course forward, I fear that mistakes of the past are being repeated — errors that put the well-being of large corporations above that of working Americans.
The latest monthly jobs report was staggering: Businesses across the nation shed more than 20.5 million jobs in April. The U.S. unemployment rate has climbed to 14.7 percent — the highest rate on record since tracking began in 1948. One in every five Americans employed before the onset of the pandemic are out of work. Ten years of unprecedented economic gains in our state were wiped out in a single month.
Over the past decade, New York generated 1.3 million jobs, reaching a record high of 8.3 million private-sector jobs in February, as unemployment fell to a record low. Wages increased by 47 percent, and we raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Now, our state is looking at a multiyear recovery, one longer and with a deeper decline than we faced after the Great Recession.
As states throughout the country take steps to reopen, Washington must not repeat mistakes of the past. Large corporations receiving government bailouts must be held accountable for doing right by their workers.
So far, Washington has been in repeat mode.
The $2 trillion federal assistance package passed in March included hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up large corporations without questioning their commitment to workers or business practices. I understand the desire to keep businesses from failing, but doing so makes sense only if government funds are being used to support workers — not to enrich executives and shareholders.
But that's what is happening. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department are jointly launching a $500 billion bond-buying program without any requirement that companies receiving aid retain workers or limit distributions to their executives and shareholders. This is even more shocking given that the Federal Reserve's principal mandate is to promote maximum employment.
Think about that prospect — $500 billion in federal financial support with no strings attached. That's great for executives and shareholders! That's great for the largest corporations in this country, those that have increased their debt by close to $4 trillion since 2009, while enriching themselves via stock buybacks and massive dividends. Meanwhile, workers get laid off and taxpayers foot the bill for unemployment benefits, Medicaid, food assistance and other public supports.
We've seen this movie before. This is what Washington did after the 2007-2009 recession caused by mortgage fraud. Homeowners lost life savings and equity in their homes while bankers made fortunes. Taxpayers bailed out corporations and executives while those same taxpayers' home equity was lost. The injustice of our system was glaring and obnoxious. Bankers that had reaped record profits by selling what turned out to be toxic securities were then handed a taxpayer-funded parachute for a soft landing during the crash. This inequity is poised to happen again, as corporations are planning their next bailout scheme with their friends in Washington.
Even as the number of coronavirus cases in our country continues to rise, some corporations are looking for a chance to increase their profit margins on the backs of Americans they have laid off. Corporate leaders are telling Wall Street analysts that this is an opportunity to rethink their businesses and permanently reduce their payrolls as they get lean. This would mean significantly higher structural unemployment for longer periods. It would mean more spending by governments at all levels to keep Americans fed, housed and healthy. Ultimately, this stands to result in greater inequality, greater income disparity and potentially greater social unrest.
Our country cannot let that happen again. Washington must put in place stronger requirements for corporations that take federal bailout money. Corporations that do so must hire back at the same levels that they employed before the onset of the public health crisis and subsequent economic fallout. Federal financial assistance that refinances corporate balance sheets shouldn't be the catalyst for bigger corporate profit margins at the expense of workers.
Washington's bailout rule should be simple and clear: No government support if you don't hire back all of your pre-pandemic workers.
Government should not subsidize corporate plans to lay off workers, while any corporate layoffs must require a return of any government subsidy. The path forward for all of us will be difficult enough. Corporations are driven by profits. It is the role of government to ensure that those profits do not come at the expense of the Americans who are the backbone of our economy.
May 13, 2020.
Governor Cuomo and Governor Hogan Call On Congress to Act On State Fiscal Relief. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-and-governor-hogan-call-congress-act-state-fiscal-relief
'This Is Not a Red State and Blue State Crisis'
"As Congress reconvenes, delivering urgent state fiscal relief must be a top priority. Each day that Congress fails to act, states are being forced to make cuts that will devastate the essential services the American people rely on and destroy the economic recovery before it even gets off the ground.
"With widespread bipartisan agreement on the need for this assistance, we cannot afford a partisan process that turns this urgent relief into another political football. This is not a red state and blue state crisis. This is a red white and blue pandemic. The coronavirus is apolitical. It does not attack Democrats or Republicans. It attacks Americans.
"The nation's governors are counting on our leaders in Washington to come together, put partisanship aside, and to get this done for the American people. This is why the National Governors Association continues to call for the passage of critical priorities that will help states and territories lead us through this pandemic response and get America moving again: $500 billion in fiscal support for state budgetary shortfalls resulting from the pandemic, enhanced FMAP funding to provide healthcare to our most vulnerable, and 100 percent federal cost share for FEMA response and recovery efforts."
May 13, 2020.
Governor Cuomo Announces State Department of Health Will Host Statewide Webinar Tomorrow for Healthcare Providers to Discuss Inflammatory Disease in Children Related to COVID-19. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-state-department-health-will-host-statewide-webinar-tomorrow
State is Investigating Approximately 102 Reported Cases & 3 Deaths Related to COVID Illness in Children with Symptoms Similar to an Atypical Kawasaki Disease and Toxic Shock-Like Syndrome
Of Children Displaying these Symptoms, 60 Percent Tested Positive for COVID-19 and 40 Percent Tested Positive for COVID-19 Antibodies
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the State Department of Health will host a statewide webinar tomorrow for all healthcare providers to discuss the symptoms, testing and care of reported inflammatory disease in children related to COVID-19.
The State is currently investigating approximately 102 reported cases in New York where children - predominantly school-aged - are experiencing these symptoms possibly due to COVID-19. The illness has taken the lives of three young New Yorkers, including a 5-year old in New York City, a 7-year old in Westchester County and a teenager in Suffolk County. Of these cases, 60 percent of the children displaying these symptoms tested positive for COVID-19 and 40 percent tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. Additionally, 71 percent of the cases have resulted in ICU admission, 19 percent of cases have resulted in intubation and 43 percent of the cases remain hospitalized.
"We must stay alert with this virus because we're still learning, and what we thought we knew doesn't always turn out to be true," Governor Cuomo said. "When we first started with this virus, we were told children are not affected, which was a great sigh of relief. But now we're finding out that may not be 100 percent accurate because we're seeing cases where children who may have been infected with the COVID virus show symptoms of an inflammatory disease like the Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome. New York State has been aggressively investigating these new cases and is leading the efforts on this nationwide, and the more we know the more we know, the more we'll communicate."
New Yorkers should seek immediate care if a child has:
Predominant Symptoms:
Prolonged fever (more than five days)
Severe abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting
Bloodshot eyes
Skin rash
Other Symptoms:
Change in skin color - becoming pale, patchy and/or blue
Difficulty feeding (infants) or is too sick to drink fluids
Trouble breathing or is breathing very quickly
Racing heart or chest pain
Lethargy, irritability or confusion
New York State is leading the national effort to find out more about this illness related to COVID-19 in children. Governor Cuomo yesterday directed hospitals statewide to prioritize COVID-19 testing for children displaying symptoms similar to an atypical Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome.
At the request of the CDC, the state is helping to develop the national criteria for identifying and responding to COVID-related illness. New York State has notified 49 other states across the country of emerging cases of COVID-related illness in children, and now 14 other states and five European countries have reported cases as well.
The State Department of Health is also partnering with the NY Genome Center and Rockefeller University to conduct a genome and RNA sequencing study to better understand COVID-related illnesses in children and the possible genetic basis of this syndrome.
At the direction of Governor Cuomo, the State Department of Health has issued an advisory about this serious inflammatory disease, called "Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Associated with COVID-19," to inform healthcare providers of the condition, as well as to provide guidance for testing and reporting. Health care providers, including hospitals, are required to report to the Department of Health all cases of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with COVID-19 in those under 21 years of age.
Though most children who get COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms, in the United Kingdom, a possible link has also been reported between pediatric COVID-19 and serious inflammatory disease. The inflammatory syndrome has features which overlap with Kawasaki disease and toxic shock syndrome and may occur days to weeks after acute COVID-19 illness. It can include persistent fever, abdominal symptoms, rash, and even cardiovascular symptoms requiring intensive care.
Early recognition by pediatricians and referral to a specialist including to critical care is essential. Molecular and serological testing for COVID-19 in children exhibiting the above symptoms is recommended. The majority of patients have tested positive for COVID-19, some on molecular testing for SARS-COV-2, others on serological testing.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Fourth Region Hits Benchmark to Begin Reopening May 15th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-fourth-region-hits-benchmark-begin
North Country Joins Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions, Which Have Met the Seven Metrics Required to Begin Reopening After NYS on Pause Orders Expire on May 15th
Regional Monitoring Dashboard Showing How Many Metrics Each Region Has Met to Reopen is Available Here
Results of Antibody Testing Survey of 2,750 Members of the NYS Police Show 3.1 Percent Have COVID-19 Antibodies
Results of Antibody Testing Survey of Approximately 3,000 Members of the NYS Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Show 7.5 Percent Have COVID-19 Antibodies
Confirms 2,176 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 340,661; New Cases in 47 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that as of today, the North Country has met all seven metrics required to begin phase one of the state's regional phased reopening plan when NYS on PAUSE orders expire on May 15th, joining the Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions. If the trend continues, these four regions can begin opening businesses for phase one, which includes construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing. The Central New York region has met six of the seven metrics and could potentially be ready at the end of the week. A guide to the state's "NY Forward Reopening" Plan is available here. The state's regional monitoring dashboard is available here.
The Governor also announced the results of the state's antibody testing survey of 2,750 members of the New York State Police Show 3.1 percent of the members have COVID-19 antibodies. Additionally, results of the state's antibody testing survey of approximately 3,000 members of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision show 7.5 percent of members have COVID-19 antibodies. These results are compared to 12.3 percent of the general population in Upstate New York that tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies.
As the numbers continue to decline and we are coming down the other side of the mountain, a lot of attention is now on reopening.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
"As the numbers continue to decline and we are coming down the other side of the mountain, a lot of attention is now on reopening," Governor Cuomo said. "We're doing something in this state that no other state is doing - we are having a transparent discussion about the reopening operations because it only works if people understand it and are part of it. New Yorkers will know exactly what is happening in their region and in their county on a daily basis, and the state will continue to monitor these metrics to determine when regions are ready to reopen and if we need to adjust the reopening plans. Four regions have now met all seven metrics required to begin reopening, and we will continue to keep New Yorkers informed as this process goes forward."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,176 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 340,661 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 340,661 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,494
15
Allegany
44
2
Broome
382
3
Cattaraugus
61
0
Cayuga
60
0
Chautauqua
43
1
Chemung
132
1
Chenango
112
0
Clinton
78
1
Columbia
318
4
Cortland
31
1
Delaware
66
1
Dutchess
3,429
30
Erie
4,606
76
Essex
32
0
Franklin
17
0
Fulton
140
5
Genesee
174
0
Greene
206
0
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
84
3
Jefferson
68
0
Lewis
11
0
Livingston
103
1
Madison
253
2
Monroe
1,959
69
Montgomery
68
1
Nassau
38,587
153
Niagara
690
19
NYC
187,250
1,127
Oneida
686
10
Onondaga
1,395
87
Ontario
109
2
Orange
9,693
61
Orleans
142
9
Oswego
76
0
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,108
10
Rensselaer
420
4
Rockland
12,543
39
Saratoga
410
3
Schenectady
587
6
Schoharie
47
1
Schuyler
8
0
Seneca
49
0
St. Lawrence
192
1
Steuben
230
1
Suffolk
37,305
243
Sullivan
1,135
16
Tioga
108
1
Tompkins
136
4
Ulster
1,481
16
Warren
223
2
Washington
214
4
Wayne
84
1
Westchester
31,611
139
Wyoming
77
0
Yates
22
1
May 13, 2020.
Governor Cuomo Announces 12 More Counties Are Now Eligible to Resume Elective Surgeries. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-12-more-counties-are-now-eligible-resume-elective-surgeries
Albany, Cayuga, Chemung, Columbia, Clinton, Cortland, Montgomery, Orange, Otsego, Rensselaer, Schenectady and Warren Counties Now Eligible to Resume Elective Surgeries
Total of 47 Counties Can Now Resume Elective Surgeries
Ambulatory Surgical Centers in These 47 Counties Will Also Be Able to Resume Elective Surgeries
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced 12 more counties are now eligible to resume elective surgeries. The Governor previously announced that the state will allow elective outpatient treatments to resume in counties and hospitals without significant risk of COVID-19 surge in the near term, and a total of 47 counties can now resume elective surgeries:
Albany
Genesee
Putnam
Allegany
Herkimer
Rensselaer
Broome
Jefferson
Saratoga
Cattaraugus
Lewis
Schenectady
Cayuga
Livingston
Schoharie
Chautauqua
Madison
Schuyler
Chemung
Monroe
St. Lawrence
Chenango
Montgomery
Steuben
Clinton
Niagara
Sullivan
Columbia
Oneida
Tompkins
Cortland
Onondaga
Ulster
Delaware
Ontario
Warren
Dutchess
Orange
Wayne
Essex
Orleans
Wyoming
Franklin
Oswego
Yates
Fulton
Otsego
Ambulatory surgical centers in these 47 counties will also be able to resume elective surgeries. Additionally, the State Department of Health clarified that these centers may continue providing certain diagnostic or screening procedures such as for cancer. Empire State Development Corporation also clarified that doctors' visits continue to be permitted and remain open as essential businesses.
"When this pandemic first began our hospital systems were overwhelmed and we stopped elective surgeries to increase our hospital capacity for COVID patients," Governor Cuomo said. "We have made tremendous progress to stop the spread of this infection and all the arrows are pointing in the right direction. We are now at a point where we can restart elective surgeries in counties without a significant risk of a surge of COVID-19 in the near term, and a total of 47 counties have met the criteria to begin resuming these elective treatments."
May 13, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Fourth Region Hits Benchmark to Begin Reopening May 15th. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-25
North Country Joins Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions, Which Have Met the Seven Metrics Required to Begin Reopening After NYS on Pause Orders Expire on May 15th
Regional Monitoring Dashboard Showing How Many Metrics Each Region Has Met to Reopen is Available Here
Results of Antibody Testing Survey of 2,750 Members of the NYS Police Show 3.1 Percent Have COVID-19 Antibodies
Results of Antibody Testing Survey of Approximately 3,000 Members of the NYS Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Show 7.5 Percent Have COVID-19 Antibodies
Confirms 2,176 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 340,661; New Cases in 47 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "We are doing the most transparent discussion and reopening operation of any state. Why? Because it only works if people understand it and if people are part of it. This is not a government exercise that we're doing here. This is a social exercise. The 19 million people of New York State are doing this and the best I can do is give them the information. ... This is a function of the actions of every individual and every family."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, earlier today Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that as of today, the North Country has met all seven metrics required to begin phase one of the state's regional phased reopening plan when NYS on PAUSE orders expire on May 15th, joining the Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions. If the trend continues, these four regions can begin opening businesses for phase one, which includes construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing. The Central New York region has met six of the seven metrics and could potentially be ready at the end of the week. A guide to the state's "NY Forward Reopening" Plan is available here. The state's regional monitoring dashboard is available here.
The Governor also announced the results of the state's antibody testing survey of 2,750 members of the New York State Police Show 3.1 percent of the members have COVID-19 antibodies. Additionally, results of the state's antibody testing survey of approximately 3,000 members of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision show 7.5 percent of members have COVID-19 antibodies. These results are compared to 12.3 percent of the general population in Upstate New York that tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies.
Finally, the Governor confirmed 2,176 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 340,661 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 340,661 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,494
15
Allegany
44
2
Broome
382
3
Cattaraugus
61
0
Cayuga
60
0
Chautauqua
43
1
Chemung
132
1
Chenango
112
0
Clinton
78
1
Columbia
318
4
Cortland
31
1
Delaware
66
1
Dutchess
3,429
30
Erie
4,606
76
Essex
32
0
Franklin
17
0
Fulton
140
5
Genesee
174
0
Greene
206
0
Hamilton
5
0
Herkimer
84
3
Jefferson
68
0
Lewis
11
0
Livingston
103
1
Madison
253
2
Monroe
1,959
69
Montgomery
68
1
Nassau
38,587
153
Niagara
690
19
NYC
187,250
1,127
Oneida
686
10
Onondaga
1,395
87
Ontario
109
2
Orange
9,693
61
Orleans
142
9
Oswego
76
0
Otsego
67
0
Putnam
1,108
10
Rensselaer
420
4
Rockland
12,543
39
Saratoga
410
3
Schenectady
587
6
Schoharie
47
1
Schuyler
8
0
Seneca
49
0
St. Lawrence
192
1
Steuben
230
1
Suffolk
37,305
243
Sullivan
1,135
16
Tioga
108
1
Tompkins
136
4
Ulster
1,481
16
Warren
223
2
Washington
214
4
Wayne
84
1
Westchester
31,611
139
Wyoming
77
0
Yates
22
1
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks with ASL interpretation is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. Let me introduce the people who are with me, those of you who are not familiar with them. To my right, Dr. Howard Zucker who is the New York State Commissioner of Health and is doing a fantastic job here; to my left Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor; to her left Gareth Rhodes who is Deputy Superintendent of the Department of Financial Services but has been working with us on this COVID situation, has been doing a great job.
Pleasure to be in the North Country today, Jefferson County. I want to thank Dr. Stone for having us and the hospitality today. I wear a mask. Apparently it doesn't say anything. You don't see any words on it but when someone wears a mask it says to other people, I respect you, I respect your family, I respect the work of our front-line hero, the nurses, the doctors, et cetera, and I wear this mask to protect you and your family because I respect you. It's a sign of respect, and all New Yorkers I believe should do it.
Let's talk about the facts today, the situation we're looking at today. Number of hospitalizations are down again so that is good news. The rolling total of the number of hospitalizations has been down and that's good news. The number of intubations is down and that's good news. And new cases per day which is something we watch very carefully a little bit up, but overall down. I refer to that as the mountain. You see the outline of the mountain. Adirondacks, we know about mountains. You see how fast we went up and how much slower the decline was and that's important. That's what the national experts are talking about when they say you could have an outbreak that you couldn't recover from.
The increase, the incline is very fast. The virus travels very quickly and then getting control of the outbreak is much slower and much harder and that was the experience we had here in New York. You see how fast it went up and how many days of super effort by New Yorkers it took to get that spread under control and to reduce the rate of new cases.
The number of lives lost, still painfully and tragically high. These are not numbers. These are families. These are lost individuals. They're fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and 166 families are in pain today and they are in our thoughts and prayers.
When you look at where we are today, we're just about where we were when we started this terrible situation so we have hopefully come through the worst. We paid a heck of a price for it but we've come through the worst.
One of the things we've been very diligent in doing is taking care of our essential workers. We owe them. You know, there's still a right thing in life and a wrong thing. There's still obligation and gratitude, and the essential workers we owe. We closed down everything. We communicated how important it was to do that, how deadly this virus was, and then we told the essential workers, but you have to show up tomorrow even though this is a deadly virus. We need you to show up, nurses, doctors, transit workers, police officers. We need you to go to work while everybody else can stay home and try to be safe. They made a tremendous sacrifice. And I asked them to do it myself, day after day. I told them we would do everything we needed to do to protect them.
We've been doing testing of the essential workers to see if we have a problem anywhere and good news has been the frontline workers are testing at lower rates than the general population.
So downstate New York, the transit workers tested about 14 percent of the overall number tested positive. That's compared to New York City where about 19.9 percent of the general population.
The healthcare workers, 12 percent. think about that, nurses, doctors, in emergency rooms, 12 percent. You know what that means? That means PPE works. Masks work. Gloves work. Hand sanitizing works. How do healthcare workers have a lower percentage of infection than the general population? Because people don't wear these at home and they don't take the same precautions. But this works.
NYPD, 10 percent, Fire Department 17 percent. We then sampled the New York State Police who have been doing extraordinary work. We sampled 2,700 which is a large sample of the state police. Only 3 percent tested positive. And that's general population, upstate New York of about 12 percent so that's also very good news.
And then we tested the people who work at DOCS, our Department of Corrections Services. Prisons, we've also been very careful because prisons, you have a congregate population. Wherever you have those gatherings that's where we see that virus spread so we did a test of those people who work at the Department of Corrections, primarily corrections officials. We sampled over 3,000. 7.5 percent, again, below the general population rate.
So that should give us all some peace of mind that the essential workers who are out there are doing fantastic work for us and we've made sure that they were protected in doing the work that they're doing. All of the frontline workers, public service, frontline workers, tested below the general population so we should feel good about that.
Also, I want people to know that elective surgeries are going to start in 12 more counties and that's important. We had stopped elective surgeries so we had additional hospital capacity for COVID patients. But as the number of COVID cases has come down we can restart elective surgeries, also ambulatory services, so that is good news.
A lot of attention on reopening now and we're doing something in this state that no other state is doing. We are doing the most transparent discussion and reopening operation of any state. Why? Because it only works if people understand it and if people are part of it. This is not a government exercise that we're doing here. This is a social exercise. The 19 million people of New York State are doing this and the best I can do is give them the information. I believe in them. I believe in the people and I believe when they have the right information and they trust the information and they know the information is actually factual as opposed to some type of political jargon, they will do the right thing. And they have, and that's how we bent that curve and flattened that curve.
Same thing on reopening. You will know exactly what is happening in your region, in your county. You'll know the facts. You will know the numbers on a daily basis and you will know what we're doing. We heard testimony yesterday from the national experts, Dr.Fauci, who warns of suffering and death if the U.S. reopens too soon. If you reopen the economy too soon, people are not taking the precautions, you have gatherings, the virus will transfer and you will see a spike in hospitalizations and you will see a spike in deaths. What's the key in that expression? The key is "too soon." If you open too soon. All right. What does that mean, too soon? Too soon means you' opening, you're increasing activity at a rate that the hospital system cannot handle and people are not taking the right precautions. That's what too soon means.
Well, then how do we calibrate too soon? You can measure exactly what you are doing. The red valve is the reopening value. You start the reopening valve, activity increases, you're doing diagnostic testing - are you positive, are you negative - and you watch that rate.
You're doing antibody testing which tells you how many people were infected and you watch that rate. You know on a day-to-day basis now how many people are walking into the hospital with COVID. We have those numbers. Never had them before. We have them now. You watch that rate every day. And if you watch those rates, you know how fast the virus is spreading, what they call the rate of transmission, the RT. So, too soon, watch the numbers, watch the measures, there is a science to this. And that has to be watched in every county, in every region, and that has to be monitored. And you see those numbers starting to move, you will know if you're reopening too soon and if people aren't taking the right precautions and if you see that virus spreading.
So give the information to the people. That's what I'm trying to do. That's what I've been trying to do from day one, because government can't do any of this. This is a function of the actions of every individual and every family. We'll have a regional control group, the North Country, for every region in the state. Watch those numbers every day, make sure those businesses are complying, make sure people are complying, and watch it day to day and you'll know if the activity is increasing to a level that is increasing the rate of transmission. And act accordingly. And that has to be done on a region-by-region basis. Now also with this virus, we must stay alert because we're still learning and what we thought we knew doesn't always turn out to be true. This virus has been ahead of us every step of the way in this country.
When we first started with this virus, we were told it was coming from China, right? Wuhan province, it came from China, and it's going to come from China now to the United States. Turns out it didn't from China to the United States. It did in some parts of the country, but the east coast, it turns out it came from Europe. I talk to everyone all day long, in the beginning of this nobody ever said it's coming from Europe. We had two million Europeans come to New York, New Jersey, the big airports, international airport, JFK, and no one knew it was coming from Europe, because it had gone from China to Europe, and then it gets here from Europe. No one knew. When this started, once you have the virus, you have antibodies, and then you're immune from further infection. That was stated as a fact. Now it turns out maybe you're not immune, even if you had it. Maybe you have some immunity, but not total immunity, we're not sure. Okay.
Then, we were told, children are not affected by COVID virus. Great. Sigh of relief. Less than 1 percent of New Yorkers who are hospitalized under 20 years old. Now, we're finding out, that may not be 100 percent accurate, either. Because now we're seeing cases, the Department of Health is investigating, and New York is in many ways, the tip of the arrow here. Looking at 102 cases where children who may have been infected with the COVID virus show symptoms of an inflammatory disease like Kawasaki disease or toxic shock-like syndrome. We have lost three children in New York because of this. Five-year-old boy, seven-year-old boy, and an 18-year-old girl. These cases are all across the state, predominantly where the population is. 60 percent of these children tested positive for the COVID virus. 40 percent tested positive for the antibodies of the COVID virus, okay? That means children either currently had the virus or could have had it several weeks ago and now have the antibodies saying that they had the virus and they recovered from the virus. 70 percent of the cases went into ICU, which means they're serious. When you go into intensive care, it means it's serious. 19 percent resulted in intubation, which means they're very serious. 43 percent of the cases are still hospitalized. On the age, when they say children, it's across the board. It can be under one-year-old, it can be up 20, 21-year-old. The majority between five years old and 14 years old. It affects children of all races, and it's not just in New York.
The Department of Health sent an alert to 49 other states. Dr. Zucker has been leading this conversation nationwide. 14 other states are now investigating cases in their state for possible inflammatory disease for children related to COVID. Five European countries are now looking at this. Because it happened after the fact and does not present as a normal COVID case, it may not have been initially diagnosed as a COVID case. COVID cases are normally respiratory. This is not predominantly respiratory. It's an inflammation of the blood vessels, which could affect the heart. So, it's more of a cardiac case than a respiratory case, which is a new manifestation of the COVID virus.
Department of Health is being very aggressive in doing the investigation, and also talking to other states, countries, about what they may have learned, partnering with Rockefeller University and the New York Genome Center to see if there's anything in the DNA of these cases. But parents have to be aware this. The predominant signs, fever, abdominal pain, skin rash. Other symptoms, change in skin color, difficulty feeding, trouble breathing, racing heart, lethargy, irritability or confusion. So, it's a wide array of symptoms, as you can see, which makes it even harder for a parent to know exactly what they're dealing with. If your child has been exposed to someone who had COVID, even if it was several weeks ago, that is a special alert in this situation. Department of Health has told the hospitals in the state to prioritize COVID testing for children who come in with any of these situations. And if you want more information, this is the health site to go to.
Now, as a parent, I can tell you this is a parent's worst nightmare, right? To have a child -- we thought that children were not especially affected by the virus. To now find out that they might be, and it might be several weeks later, this is truly disturbing. So we raise it because it's something that parents should be aware of. We're still finding out more about it. We're working very aggressively. The more we know, the more we'll communicate. For now, everything we know is on that website. But parents say, you know, "Should I be concerned?" You should be aware. You should be aware. The first job is to protect our children. My baby is 22. Not really baby any more she likes to tell me. She's theoretically, this is 21 and below. She's 22, maybe I have nothing to worry about. I still worry because that's what you do as a parent, you worry. I tried to get her up to come with me today, Michaela, 22 years old. If you think you have any power in life, try to get a 22-year-old out of bed at seven thirty in the morning and you will quickly come down to earth about any expectation of anything. But go to the website in the meantime.
New York State, I'm proud of what our people have done and we're proceeding with caution and with intelligence. We also need help from Washington. I understand the federal government has said it's up to the states. It's up to the governors. We need help to make this happen. We need help from Washington. I think that the decision or realization that is should be down state by state makes sense, but it doesn't mean the states are on their own, either. We need federal legislation.
We need what's called state and local aid. Our state budget, our state economy has suffered. We have a significant funding gap and states need assistance. In New York there's about a 61-billion-dollar funding gap which is a very, very serious funding gap. What does - who does the state fund if we don't have funds in our budget what does it mean? States fund local governments, we fund police, firefighters, and schools. If our budget doesn't work who gets cut? Police, firefighters, schools, local governments. The very people who we need to fight this virus and the very people we all call the essential workers and heroes who've been doing a great job. How do we not give them the support that they need?
We also need funding for state testing. Everyone says the key is testing. By the way, this is a tremendous operation to put in place. This will be millions of tests in New York. Tracing - never been done before to this extent. It's going to be thousands of people who have to do tracing. We need funding for that.
The Washington bill should finally provide a real economic stimulus that helps this nation rebuild. Every president has talked about the need to rebuild our infrastructure - our roads, our bridges, our airports. Every administration does a report. The bridges are falling, the roads are crumbling, our country doesn't build airports anymore - which it doesn't. We're building a new airport in downstate New York. LaGuardia airport - first new airport in 25 years in this country. How can it be that we haven't built a new airport in 25 years? You fly around the world and everybody's airport looks amazing. It's like a shopping mall, hotel, entertainment complex and then you come to an airport in this country. You need to stimulate the economy; you need to create jobs - do what every president has said but none has done. Democratic and Republican.
The bill that was introduced yesterday has something that's very important to many states. It repeals what's called SALT, State and Local Tax deduction. This was a tax change made two years ago, three years ago in Washington. It increases the taxes of homeowners in certain states. New York is one of them. It costs New York State and about 29-billion-dollars per year. State of Massachusetts, 11-billion-dollars per year. It also effects New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland. That is repealed in this bill that the House put in. It's the single best piece of action for the State of New York. And we have representatives who know this very well, and Representative Lowey and Representative Neil, I applaud them for putting it in. They have to make sure that it's in the final bill because the only thing that matters is what's in the final bill. But that is good news in this bill.
And the need for state and local aid, this is not a Democratic, Republican issue. You have Democratic governors, you have Republican governors. All governors will say they need assistance from the federal government. The governors work together in an organization called the National Governors Association - the NGA. The chairman is a Republican, Governor Hogan from Maryland. I'm the Vice Chairman, Democrat. Governor Hogan and I did a joint statement on behalf of all the governors saying we understand what we have to do, we're prepared to do it, but we need help from Washington, and we need that state and local funding. So this is not a partisan issue.
Something else that Washington has to do, which is very important, special interests always rear their ugly head. These bills that are coming out of Washington, they have a lot of funding to get the economy running, a lot of money for big businesses, and a lot of money for millionaires and a lot of money for large corporations. I fear what is going to happen is that corporations are going to use this pandemic as an excuse to lay off workers. They're already telling analysts that their profits are going to go up because they're going to reduce their payroll. So, you'll have Americans now out of work, who think they're going to get their job back, but the corporation is going to announce, "By the way, we don't need all the employees back, we're going to reduce our number of employees." And you'll see layoffs for Americans.
We went through this before. 2008, we had the mortgage fraud economic catastrophe, right? And we bailed out the banks. I was Attorney General at the time. So many banks took the bailout from taxpayers and then gave themselves bonuses, or gave their employees bonuses with taxpayer dollars. And as Attorney General, I had to bring actions against these corporations to get the money back. How absurd - they create a financial catastrophe in 2008, because of these mortgage scams and mortgage frauds, taxpayers bail out the corporation, they turn around and use the money to give themselves a fat paycheck, when they're the ones who caused the problem in the first place.
So, we made this mistake before. We can't make this mistake again. I did an op-ed today in the Washington Post that speaks just to this. You want to provide subsidies to corporations? I understand that. Make sure the subsidies are tied to worker protections. Very simple. If a corporation gets a check from the government, that corporation must not lay off any workers. Have the same number of workers after the pandemic that you had before the pandemic. And don't think taxpayers are going to subsidize you, Mr. Corporation, so you can then lay off workers, and then the taxpayers can then pay for that. I call it the Americans First Law: No corporate bailout if you're going to lay off workers. And it's going to be introduced by members of the New York congressional delegation, and I'm very proud of them for their leadership. If we get that Washington bill passed, then it's going to make a significant difference, because it's going to give states the ability to do what they need to do to reopen, and we can take it from there because we are New York tough, which is New York tough, and smart, and united, and disciplined, and tough enough to love.
