Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on MSNBC's Testing & the Road to Reopening with Nicolle Wallace. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/audio-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-guest-msnbcs-testing-road-reopening-nicolle-wallace
Governor Cuomo: "If you want to get the economy running, do you really want to have states across the nation declaring bankruptcy? Do you want to see that stock market go through the cellar? Let a state or a couple of states declare bankruptcy. Do you want you want to see the economy in this nation suffer in a way that it won't come back for years? Let states declare bankruptcy. From an economic point of view it is bizarre. And then to say that reimbursing states for coronavirus cost is a bail out of the blue states, these are states that lost thousands of people. It's not red or blue."
Cuomo: "Is there a moment in this country in Washington where these guys are going to stop playing politics? Even with people who died in coronavirus, [Mitch McConnell] is going to say, 'Well they died in blue states, so they're Democrats.' I mean, they're Americans who died. Just at one point this corrosive partisanship has to stop, and if it doesn't stop when it comes to coronavirus. It'll never stop."
Last night, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on MSNBC's Testing & The Road to Reopening with Nicolle Wallace.
Audio of the Governor's interview is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's interview is available here:
Nicolle Wallace: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Governor, we meet on a day of some pretty momentous political headline and pretty momentous science headlines. I want to start with the science. You shared information in your briefing today about antibodies. Is that encouraging? And can you take us through how many New Yorkers, based on this early study, may have already been exposed to COVID-19.
Governor Cuomo: Nicolle, it was surprising. We had about - We did a 3,000 person survey, which is fairly extensive, all throughout the state. Statewide it was about 14% of the people had the antibodies which was 14% had the virus. That's about 2.7 million people in our state. New York City it was close to 20% which was surprising. So, the good news is these are people who have the antibodies. They can then donate blood for the convalescent plasma which is probably one of the best therapeutics that show promise. The other good news is, you know, we talk about the death rate. We have about 15,000 people who have died in New York. That is hospitalizations and nursing homes. That does not count the actual death which we still have to calculate. But it's 15,000 on a much wider boundary. So, the death rate is like 0.5. The normal flu is 0.1-0.3. So, that gives a perspective on the death rate if you are looking for a silver lining.
Nicolle Wallace: I think we are all looking for silver linings. And I think it makes clear how much of the science is unfolding as we navigate the crisis. Another piece of reporting on that front is the New York Times report that suggests there was as many as 10,000 infections in New York at the beginning of March. What do you make of some of the news reporting, some of the studies that show it was here much earlier than we thought?
Governor Cuomo: Well, it's an eye opener and I think it is important because we have to do a retrospective on this. Because I am afraid it is not only in the past, it is going to be in the future. They have been talking about the possibility of a global pandemic for many, many years but it never really happened. And until it happens, it does not get people's attention and it is not actualized. But now look, we're learning. When they say that China has the virus last November, last December, then I think the flares have to go up at that point. Because if China has the virus, that virus is going to get on a plane. It is going to go to Europe. It is going to get on another plane. It is going to come to New York. It is going to come to California. So, they're now saying the virus was here in February, maybe January, so all these actions we are taking in March - the horse is out of the barn.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, and your message this week, we talked as you were leaving a meeting with President Trump, was testing, testing, testing. At this point, how does that fit into your strategy moving forward or any attempt to open up the state. It seems to me like it is a snapshot, it is a moment of time, but without it it's hard to understand how you even draw up plans for doing anything normal.
Governor Cuomo: Yes. Nicolle, it's snapshot but then it is snapshot, snapshot, snapshot, right? Then you put all those snapshots together and you have a motion picture. Reopening, alright, the only guideposts you have on reopening are the virus infections which you can only find from testing. The calibration is always going to be you want to open as fast as possible, yes, we want to make sure we don't increase the virus spread. The only way we find that out, we calibrate and gauge it, is if you are testing. So, you take a snapshot. We took a snapshot today. It was 20%. It was 14% statewide. Now, let's see how that progresses, how that changes. If people show the same discipline, we start to reopen. We have a little more activity. Weather is getting warm. But watch the gauge. Watch the meter. And the meter is the virus infections that you see from the testing.
Nicolle Wallace: You went to see the President to ask for some sort of a partnership. Can you talk about what you got and if there has been any sort of a follow up since you were at the White House this week?
Governor Cuomo: Yes, there's been a lot of back and forth on testing. Everybody says we have to test, right? It has now been left up to the states and there was back and forth. Do the states test? Does the federal government test? The federal government stands up and they talk about what they are doing on testing. But then there is a disconnect because some people say it should be left to the states. So, I just wanted to iron it out so to speak. This is a new frontier, this whole testing. Between the states and the federal government who does what? Who does what? I have private labs in my state. I have 300 commercial labs. I regulate them. I can administer the testing and planning the tracing operation which is also extensive. But, the manufacturers of lab equipment can't get the supplies so they can't provide it to commercial labs. That supply chain for the national manufacturers, that should be the responsibility of the federal government. Let them figure out how to deal with China or South Korea -
Nicolle Wallace: Did they commit to doing that?
Governor Cuomo: Yes, and that was the division of responsibility. So, the feds will take that piece. I will take the front end piece. The states will be responsible for the testing. They will be responsible to the supply chain for national manufacturers so my labs get the test kits and the reagents. And we agreed to a very aggressive plan of double amount of tests, from 20,000 to 40,000 tests. That is maximum capacity of my commercial labs.
Nicolle Wallace: And will that include diagnostic testing and antibody testing?
Governor Cuomo: That is diagnostic and antibody. We still have to work through what percentage do we want of the antibody versus diagnostic. The antibody testing has a role and has purpose. But diagnostic obviously has, I believe, the greater role going forward. So, you actually know when testing you're testing employees how to place the business, etc.
Nicolle Wallace: Take me through the partnership with former Mayor Bloomberg on tracing.
Governor Cuomo: You know we talk about testing. A big part of the function of testing is you find a person that is positive, you then trace the contacts of that person, find more positives, and isolate them. So that is the way to reduce the spread of the virus, one of the ways to reduce the spread of the virus. This tracing is a massive operation. You know, New York we have 250,000 people who tested positive already. How do you start to trace from 250,000 people. Think of what this is like. It is a detective who takes that one individual, finds out who they have been with, who they are in the workplace with, who they went for a walk with, and then contact all of those people. It is massive. It is literally thousands of employees. Nobody has done it before. And you have to do it for the tri-state area in our case because you have New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Everybody is in and out. Long Island, northern suburbs, how do you even being to do this? Nobody has done this. Mike Bloomberg, former Mayor of New York, I've worked with him. He was New York Mayor when I was Governor. He has gone through this in his private business, through China, through Europe, opening and closing. He volunteered to help. He is a great talent. He knows public service. He knows this issue. So, he is going to help us design, train, and manage the testing-tracing operation,
Nicolle Wallace: Mitch McConnell today basically left it to the states to also pay for themselves and if they can't to file for bankruptcy. You had some strong words for him. Do you care to elaborate?
Governor Cuomo: It is just one of the dumb ideas of all time and, pardon my bluntness, but I don't know what else to say about it. First, everyone said, the House passed a bill today that did not have funding for state and local governments. Everybody said don't worry we will do it in the next bill. As soon as the Senate passes it, Mitch McConnell comes out and says he is not interested in it - the states should declare bankruptcy. If you want to get the economy running, do you really want to have states across the nation declaring bankruptcy? Do you want to see that stock market go through the cellar? Let a state or a couple of states declare bankruptcy. Do you want you want to see the economy in this nation suffer in a way that it won't come back for years. Let states declare bankruptcy. From an economic point of view it is bizarre. And then to say that reimbursing states for coronavirus cost is a bail out of the blue states, these are states that lost thousands of people. It's not red or blue. Is there a moment in this country in Washington where these guys are going to stop playing politics? Even with people who died in coronavirus, he's going to say, "Well they died in blue states, so they're Democrats." I mean, they're Americans who died. Just at one point this corrosive partisanship has to stop, and if it doesn't stop when it comes to coronavirus. It'll never stop.
Nicole Wallace: I want to ask you about the personal toll this has taken on you - I worked for George W. Bush on 9/11 and there was nothing that moved him more than the courage and the sacrifice and the service of the first responders, especially folks who were working down at Ground Zero for months and years. And I wonder if there's a parallel there, what this has been like for you to be in contact with the hospitals in crisis, one was described as apocalyptic as it neared the peak. To be advocating on behalf of healthcare workers who have been called everything from hoarders to liars by the folks down in Washington. Just the toll - I mean just the toll on our state, I live in New York City, on my city. How has that affected you?
Governor Cuomo: I'm not too sure I've figured that out. I can tell you this: When the pressure is on, not just in this situation as a society, but you really see what people are made of the when the pressure is on. You see the good, the bad and the ugly. You see some people who you thought were better just crumble and some people who you didn't expect anything from rise to the occasion. I think you're seeing both extremes here. You see people who really got scared and ran away and then you have people who find such courage and resilience - these nurses, these doctors in these emergency rooms. I don't know how they do it day after day after day. I ordered hospitals to increase capacity by 50 percent - so every hospital was at 150 percent. Emergency rooms were packed. People were petrified. They didn't know what this was, coronavirus, right? Reminded me of the early days of HIV - no one knew what it was. No one wanted to go near it. But these people got up every day. The outpouring from across the nation reminded me of 9/11. After 9/11, people across the country just showed up in New York, just to help. I can't tell you how many beautiful letters I've gotten, how many phone calls, how many gifts, how many cards, that just break your heart. The beauty of the American people. So you have both, right? You have the worst and you have the best and you get strength from the best to keep going. And they can give courage and inspiration to deal with the worst. But it is a - look, it's been every day for about two months, right? The human toll, the death toll. We went from 9/11, as you mentioned, 2,700 people died. We're at 15,000 deaths now. So living with that every day takes a tremendous, tremendous toll.
Nicole Wallace: Governor Cuomo, thank you for joining us, thank you for spending some time with us tonight. We're grateful for your time.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you.
April 24, 2020.
In Face of a Dangerous Uptick of Domestic Violence Incidents, Governor Cuomo Announces New Domestic Violence Text Program and New Confidential Online Service to Aid Victims of Abuse and Provide Potential Lifesaving Ways to Get Help. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/face-dangerous-uptick-domestic-violence-incidents-governor-cuomo-announces-new-domestic
DV Reports Overall are up 30 Percent in April Compared to Last Year and Incident Calls to State Have Increased 15 Percent in March Compared to Last Year
New Yorkers in Need of Help or Assistance Can Text 844-997-2121 or Can Go to the New Confidential Online Site to Reach a Professional on www.opdv.ny.gov
New Text Program and Confidential Online Service Will Make it Easier for Victims Who are Isolated with Their Abuser to Get Help
Text and Online Service Will Be Staffed 24/7 by Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence Staff Who Are Experts in Area of Domestic Violence
In the face of a dangerous uptick of domestic violence incidents, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the immediate modernization of the state's domestic violence hotline with a new text program and confidential online service to aid victims of abuse and provide potential lifesaving ways to get help. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the necessary social distancing guidelines, domestic violence victims are even more vulnerable and unsafe while isolated at home without being able to get away from their abuser and there has been a reported uptick in the number of domestic violence cases in the state. Calls to the state's domestic violence hotline are up 30 percent in April compared to last year and calls increased 18 percent from February to March 2020. State Police also report domestic violence incident calls were up 15 percent in March compared to last year.
For many victims, making a phone call to get help or accessing services may be impossible because their abuser can easily monitor their calls. The new text program and confidential online service will make it easier for these victims in isolation to contact the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and get the help they need.
New Yorkers seeking help can text 844-997-2121 or chat with a professional on the new confidential website at www.opdv.ny.gov. The text and online services will be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with OPDV staff who are experts in the area of domestic violence.
"New Yorkers are living through an unimaginably stressful period and we're seeing signs that domestic violence is on the rise as victims are stuck at home with their abusers and unable to access the help they need," Governor Cuomo said. "We've been working with state agencies to help address this issue and provide more resources, and this new text program and confidential online service will help make it easier for victims to get the help they need and get out of potentially dangerous situations."
"The reality is that abuse victims are often closely surveilled by their abuser," Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor and Chair of the New York State Council on Women and Girls, said. "In New York, no one should be at risk because they can't find a way to make their need for help known. The text and online confidential service programs we are rolling out today will provide additional and better methods for victims of domestic violence to get the help and intervention they need when they need it."
Since NYS on PAUSE went into effect, OPDV and many state agency partners have been working diligently to pursue strategies for putting safety information in front of victims in places that such information would not normally be available, including on social media accounts of public utilities or tax/finance. Additionally, major efforts have been underway to get safety flyers with the Hotline number hung up in essential retailers, such as grocery stores, pharmacies and home repair stores, among others.
April 24, 2020.
Video, Audio and Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Remarks on Federal Funding for New York State. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-and-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-remarks-federal-funding-new-york-state
Governor Cuomo: "You're not bailing out New York, New York has bailed you out every year it's bailed you out. Mitch McConnell is a taker, not a giver. New York is a state of givers. We put more money into the federal pot every year. We're the number one state in donating to the federal pot. Number one. Kentucky is the number three state in taking from the federal pot. They take out more from the federal pot than they put in. Every year. Every year."
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:
Question: Does the revenue shortfall open the doors for you to institute a cut to local governments, to schools? Do you intend on invoking that power and what kind of cuts should those entities expect?
Governor Cuomo: We're looking at that now. We don't have a decision now, but I'll tell you the truth. I said to the federal government, I've been talking about this for how long, two months. Two months. I said how can you have a federal government in a position where they're not going to provide funding to state governments and local governments? Small business, airlines, business program, now some of these large corporations now apparently have been taking money from the government programs and they're not funding state and local.
When you don't fund state and local, you know who you don't fund? Police, fire, school teachers, school officials. What was the possible theory of funding large corporations but not firefighters and not police? And not health care workers. It boggles the mind. All they said was "don't worry." Don't worry, we're going to do it in the next bill. We're going to do it in the next bill. I said to our Congressional delegation, I said to our Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, don't pass this past bill that they just did, unless you have state and local funding because they're not going to do it. "Don't worry, don't worry," They're not going to do it.
As soon as the Senate acts, McConnell turns around and says, "Oh I'm not going to do it, the state should declare bankruptcy." Bail out to the blue states. Bail out to the blue states. Again, the most un-American, uncharitable, ugly statement of all time. Yes, New York had more coronavirus cases than Kentucky. You know why? The flights from Europe land in New York. The flights were not landing in Kentucky. That's why we have the coronavirus cases. That's what the researchers now found two months later. That the virus went from China, to Europe, got on a plane and came here. And, by the way, the virus probably got on a plane in China and came here, but China maybe landed in California. The European flights landed here. That's why New York has the coronavirus cases.
Bail out New York. You're not bailing out New York, New York has bailed you out every year it's bailed you out. Mitch McConnell is a taker, not a giver. New York is a state of givers. We put more money into the federal pot every year. We're the number one state in donating to the federal pot. Number one. Kentucky is the number three state in taking from the federal pot. They take out more from the federal pot than they put in. Every year. Every year.
This is America. States, one federal pot, you put in what you can and the states that need it, take it. Okay, so for every year, New York was the number one donor state putting in more money than it took out. Putting in more money than anyone else and taking out less. Number one donor state. Kentucky, every year, was the number three state that took out more than they put in. So we were putting money into the pot, they were taking our dollars out of the pot.
Now, he wants to look at New York and say, "We're bailing you out." You're bailing us out. Just give me my money back, Senator. Just give me my money back. It's just ridiculous. "They should declare bankruptcy." Okay, Senator, pass the bill that authorizes state to declare bankruptcy. Sign the bill, Mr. President.
Economy is coming back, we're doing great. Pent up demand. Stock market wants to take off. Good. Pass a bill allowing states to be bankrupt and then let's watch how the stock market takes off at that great news about our economic resilience.
April 24, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo: In Time of Crisis, 'You See the Best of Humanity'. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-time-crisis-you-see-best-humanity
Governor Reads Letter from Kansas Farmer Who Donated One of His Few Masks to a New York Doctor
Governor Cuomo: "A farmer in northeast Kansas. His wife has one lung and diabetes. He has five masks. He sends one mask to New York for a doctor or nurse, keeps four masks. You want to talk about a snapshot of humanity? You have five masks. What do you do? You keep all five? Do you hide the five masks? Do you keep them for yourselves or others? No, you send one mask, one mask to New York to help a nurse or a doctor. How beautiful is that? I mean how selfless is that? How giving is that?"
Cuomo: "It's that love that courage that generosity of spirit that makes this country so beautiful. And makes Americans so beautiful, and it's that generosity of spirit, for me, makes up for all the ugliness that you see. Take one mask, I'll keep four. God bless America."
Earlier today, while delivering his daily briefing on New York's response to COVID-19, Governor Cuomo read a letter from a Kansas farmer who donated one of his few masks to a New York doctor.
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:
My grandmother on my father's side, Mary, was a beautiful woman but tough. She was a tough lady. She was New York tough, gone through the depression, early immigrant, worked hard all her life. And she was a little roughhewn. She was roughhewn. I would say to her, "you know grandma, met this girl, met this guy, they're really nice." She would say "nice, how do you know they're nice? It's easy to be nice when everything is nice." I said grandma "what does that mean?" She said "you know when you know they're nice? When things get hard. That's when you know if they're nice. And I never really got it.
But her point was it's easy to be nice and kind and affable when everything is easy. You really get to see people and get to see character when things get hard, and when the pressure is on is when you really get to see true colors of a person and see what they're made of. It's almost as if the pressure just forces their character and the weaknesses explode or the strengths explode and that's what we've gone through. This is been hard. It's put everyone under pressure and you've really seen what people are made of. And you've really had a snapshot of what individuals are made of, and what we are made of as a collective. And personally, I'll tell you the truth. Some people break your heart. They just break your heart. People who I thought would rise to the occasion. People who I thought were strong, under pressure they just crumbled. They just crumbled.
On the other hand, you see people who you didn't expect anything from who just rise to the occasion, and you see the best and you see the worst. You just see the best and the worst of humanity, just comes up to the surface on both ends. It just, everything gets elevated, the strength in people and the weakness in people, the beauty in people and the ugliness in people - you see both. For me, the beauty you see and the strength that you see compensates and balances for the weakness. And I get inspired by the strength so I can tolerate the heartbreak of the weakness.
Here is a letter that I received that just sums it up.
Dear Mr. Cuomo, I seriously doubt that you will ever read this letter as I know you are busy beyond belief with a disaster that has befallen our country. We are a nation in crisis, of that there is no doubt. I'm a retired farmer hunkered down in northeast Kansas with my wife who has but one lung and occasional problems with her remaining lung. She also has diabetes. We are in our seventies now and frankly I am afraid for her. Enclosed, find a solitary N95 masks, left over from my farming days. It has never been used. If you could would you please give this mask to a nurse or doctor in your state. I have kept four masks for my immediate family. Please keep on doing what you do so well. Which is to lead. Sincerely, Dennis and Sharon.
A farmer in northeast Kansas. His wife has one lung and diabetes. He has five masks. He sends one mask to New York for a doctor or nurse, keeps four masks. You want to talk about a snapshot of humanity? You have five masks. What do you do? You keep all five? Do you hide the five masks? Do you keep them for yourselves or others? No, you send one mask one mask to New York to help a nurse or a doctor. How beautiful is that? I mean how selfless is that? How giving is that? You know that's the nursing home in Niskayuna that sent one hundred ventilators down to New York City when they needed them. It's that love that courage that generosity of spirit that makes this country so beautiful. And makes Americans so beautiful, and it's that generosity of spirit, for me, makes up for all the ugliness that you see. Take one mask, I'll keep four. God bless America.
April 24, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Issues Executive Order To Make Sure Every New Yorker Automatically Receives A Postage-Paid Absentee Ballot Application. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-issues-executive-order-make-sure-every-new-yorker
Governor Previously Issued Executive Order Allowing All New Yorkers to Vote Absentee in June 23 Primary Elections
New York State Revenues Estimated to Decline by $13.3 Billion from Executive Budget Forecast; $61 Billion Shortfall Over Financial Plan Period of FY 2021 to FY 2024 Due to COVID-19
Confirms 8,130 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 271,590; New Cases in 46 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced he will issue an Executive Order mandating that the New York State Board of Elections automatically mail every New Yorker a postage-paid application for an absentee ballot. Earlier this month, the Governor issued an Executive Order allowing all New Yorkers to vote absentee in the June 23rd primary election.
The Governor also outlined the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the state. New York State revenues are estimated to decline by $13.3 billion - or 14 percent - from the Executive Budget forecast. Additionally, the revenues are estimated to decline by $61 billion over the financial plan period of FY 2021 to FY 2024.
I am issuing an Executive Order to ensure every New York voter automatically receives a postage-paid application for an absentee ballot
Governor Cuomo
"We're making great progress to flatten the curve and decrease the spread of infection, but we don't know when this pandemic will end and we can't put democracy on hold," Governor Cuomo said. "I am issuing an Executive Order to ensure every New York voter automatically receives a postage-paid application for an absentee ballot because no New Yorker should have to choose between their health and their right to vote."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 8,130 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 271,590 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 271,590 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
805
47
Allegany
31
1
Broome
232
8
Cattaraugus
39
2
Cayuga
39
2
Chautauqua
27
1
Chemung
79
3
Chenango
84
2
Clinton
53
1
Columbia
129
6
Cortland
25
0
Delaware
51
1
Dutchess
2,517
57
Erie
2,603
153
Essex
22
0
Franklin
13
0
Fulton
29
1
Genesee
127
1
Greene
90
1
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
56
2
Jefferson
58
2
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
44
3
Madison
106
0
Monroe
1199
47
Montgomery
39
0
Nassau
32,765
641
Niagara
332
37
NYC
150,473
4,618
Oneida
323
6
Onondaga
639
39
Ontario
73
0
Orange
7,155
339
Orleans
60
1
Oswego
51
2
Otsego
50
0
Putnam
619
4
Rensselaer
198
7
Rockland
10,091
263
Saratoga
278
13
Schenectady
297
9
Schoharie
21
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
18
0
St. Lawrence
144
5
Steuben
171
0
Suffolk
30,606
1,039
Sullivan
628
48
Tioga
40
0
Tompkins
121
2
Ulster
976
34
Warren
122
3
Washington
83
3
Wayne
53
0
Westchester
26,633
674
Wyoming
43
2
Yates
11
0
April 24, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Issues Executive Order to Make Sure Every New Yorker Automatically Receives a Postage-paid Absentee Ballot Application. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-issues-2
Governor Previously Issued Executive Order Allowing All New Yorkers to Vote Absentee in June 23 Primary Elections
New York State Revenues Estimated to Decline by $13.3 Billion from Executive Budget Forecast; $61 Billion Shortfall Over Financial Plan Period of FY 2021 to FY 2024 Due to COVID-19
Confirms 8,130 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 271,590; New Cases in 46 Counties
Governor: "We still have elections in the midst of all this chaos. We have seen elections held where we had people on lines for a long period of time. It makes no sense to me to tell people you have to put your life at risk, violate social distancing to come out to vote. So, we passed an executive order that said you can vote by absentee. Today, I'm asking the Board of Elections to send every New York voter what's called a - automatically receives a postage paid application for a ballot. If you want to vote, we should send you a ballot so you can vote, so you don't have to come out and get in a line."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced he will issue an Executive Order mandating that the New York State Board of Elections automatically mail every New Yorker a postage-paid application for an absentee ballot. Earlier this month, the Governor issued an Executive Order allowing all New Yorkers to vote absentee in the June 23rd primary election.
The Governor also outlined the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the state. New York State revenues are estimated to decline by $13.3 billion - or 14 percent - from the Executive Budget forecast. Additionally, the revenues are estimated to decline by $61 billion over the financial plan period of FY 2021 to FY 2024.
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. Everybody looks bright and happy and bursting with love. No? Today is Friday and I hope you all have big plans for the weekend. Can you have a weekend if you didn't have a weekday? Philosophical questions
Total hospitalizations, down. Good news. 14,200. All the evidence suggests we are on the downside of the curve. We are headed down. Net change in hospitalizations is down. Net change in intubations is down again and they have been down for a while. This is still not great news. Number of new people coming into the hospital, number of new infections is slightly down but that's basically a flat line and that is troubling. About 1,200 new, 1,300 new infections every day. Number of lives lost is still heartbreaking news. 422. Again, this is at an unimaginable level and it's dropping somewhat but it is still devastating news.
The question we are watching now is we hit the high point, we're on the way down, how far does that number come down and how far does that number drop? We have projections again, like we had projections on what the disease was going to do on the way up the mountain. We had projections on what the disease would do as a rate of decline but, again, they are just projections. Some projections have it going down and flattening at about 5,000 people in hospitals still. Some projections have the decline slowing between now and June but these are again all projections, just like they had projections as tow how fast and how far the disease would increase. Those projections, as we know, were wrong but they weren't wrong. We didn't hit those projections because of our actions, because of what we did, because of what the federal government did. Luckily, the disease did not go as high as they thought in the projections.
You now have the corresponding question, how fast is the decline, how low is the decline? Again, the variable is going to be what we do. We can change the projection on the way up. We can change the projection on the way down. But it is purely dependent on what we do. Are we socially distancing? Are we testing? How fast do we reopen? How do we reopen? You answer those questions and you will determine what the rate of decline is.
If you say, well, we're done, can't stay in the house anymore, let's just reopen, just start business tomorrow, let's go - what happens? That's what happens. All the progress we made is gone and all experts or virtually all experts will say not only does the virus spread increase but it increases to a higher point than we had increased the first time. Again, this is a remarkably effective virus at spreading and growing. I know that everyone is impatient. Let's just reopen. That's what happens if we just reopen. So we have to be smart.
People are also talking about a second wave, potential of a second wave. People are talking about potential for the virus to come back in the fall which means the game is not over which means the game could be just at halftime so let's make sure we're learning the lessons of what has happened thus far and let's make sure we are being truthful with ourselves. Not that we are deceiving anyone else but let's be truthful with ourselves. I don't think we're deceiving anyone else but let's make sure we're not deceiving ourselves. What has happened, what should we learn from as far as what has happened thus far so we make sure we don't make the same mistakes again and let's do that now.
This was our first global pandemic. Welcome. There had been people who talked about global pandemics before. Bill Gates had talked about the potential of a global pandemic during the Obama Administration. They talked about being prepared for a global pandemic but it was almost always an academic exercise, what if, what if, what if. Once it happens, once it actualizes for people, then it's different. Then people get it. We now know that a global pandemic is not just a text-book exercise, not just a table-top exercise. It can happen. When it happens, it's devastating. Let's just learn from what happened on the first one. Let's just get the basic lesson of what happened on the first one.
Last November, December, we knew that China had a virus outbreak. You can read about it in the newspapers. Everybody knew. January 26, we know we had the first confirmed case in Seattle, Washington and California. February 2nd, the president ordered a travel ban from china. March 1st, we have the first confirmed case in the State of New York. By March 19th, New York State is totally closed down. No state moved faster from first case to closedown than the State of New York. March 16, we have a full travel ban from Europe.
Researchers now find, and they report in some newspapers, the virus was spreading wildly in Italy in February. And there was an outbreak, massive outbreak in Italy in February. Researchers now say there were likely 28,000 cases in the United States in February, including 10,000 cases in the State of New York. And, the coronavirus that came to New York did not come from China. It came from Europe. Okay? When you look at the number of flights that came from Europe to New York, the New York metropolitan area, New York and New Jersey, during January, February up to the closedown, 13,000 flights bringing 2.2 million people. Alright?
So November, December, you have the outbreak in China, everybody knows. January, February, flights are coming from Europe, people are also coming from China in January, until the China closedown. And the flights continue to come from Europe until the Europe shutdown. 2.2 million people come to New York and come to New Jersey. We acted two months after the China outbreak. When you look back, does anyone think the virus was still in China, waiting for us to act, two months later. We all talk about the global economy, and how fast people move, and how mobile we are. How can you expect that when you act two months after the outbreak in China, the virus was only in China, waiting for us to act? The horse had already left the barn by the time we moved.
Research now says, knowing the number of flights coming to New York from Italy, it was like watching a horrible train wreck in slow motion. Those are the flights that were coming from Italy and from Europe, January and February. We closed the front door, with the China travel ban, which was right, even in retrospect it was right. But we left the back door open, because the virus had left China by the time we did the China travel ban. That's what the researchers are now saying, with 28,000 cases in the United States, 10,000 in New York. So, what is the lesson? An outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere. When you see November and December, an outbreak in China, just assume the next day it's in the United States. When they say it's in China, just assume that virus got on a plane that night and flew to New York or flew to Newark airport, and it's now in New York. That has to be the operating mentality. Because you don't know that the virus didn't get on a plane. All you need is one person to get on that plane in China and come to New York. The way this virus transfers, that's all you need. And you can't assume two months later the virus is still going to be sitting on a park bench in China waiting for you to get there. That is the lesson. And again, why do we need to learn the lesson? Because they're talking about this happening again with this virus where it could mutate in China, and get on a plane, and come right back. Or the next virus, or the next pandemic.
Whose job is it to warn us of these global pandemics? The president says it's the World Health Organization. And that's why he's taken action against them. Not my field. But he's right to ask the question, because this was too little, too late. And let's find out what happened so it doesn't happen again. And it will happen again. Bank on it. Let's not put our head in the sand and say, "This is the only global pandemic that we'll ever have to deal with."
In the meantime, let's keep moving forward. One of the things we're working on is how do we clean, how do we disinfect. We're talking about reopening. We still have public transit systems running. We still have buses running. So we've been working on how to come up with new cleaning and disinfecting protocols. I asked a simple question to our team a few days ago, how long does the virus live? It's something we need to know, but frankly, i think it's something everybody needs to know. The virus can live up to 72 hours on plastic surfaces and stainless-steel surfaces. Just think about this from a transit point of view or from your car point of view. It can live on a vinyl car seat up to 72 hours. It can live on a pole in a bus or on a seat in a bus for up to 72 hours, up to 24 hours on cardboard, up to four hours on materials like copper, and the droplets can hang in the air for three hours. This was a shocker to me. When they were talking about droplets, i thought it was a droplet and then it falls, right? It's a droplet that can hang in the air for three hours. I don't even know how that works. And many of the people who spread it are showing no symptoms at all. So just factor that in in your daily life when you're going through your own precautions.
We're also going to do the state finance report this week. And what you're going to see is what we expected, roughly a $13.3 billion shortfall from our forecast. Total effect all over the period of the financial plan is $61 billion. Now, what happened? New York State was not, quote, unquote, in trouble before this happened. New York State was very, very strong before this happened. Our economy was growing. It was growing at a very high rate. Our government spending has been at record lows. The spending increases. Our taxes today are lower than the day I took office. "Oh, you're a Democrat, how can that be?" They're numbers. Tax rates on individuals, businesses are lower today than the day I took office. Every tax rate, as incredible as that sounds, is lower today than the day I took office. So, the state finances were very, very strong.
And then this economic tsunami hits and you shut down all the businesses, everybody stays home, they're not getting a paycheck. They feel economic anxiety. The consequence to the state is the revenue projections are way down. What do we do about it? Some people have suggested, well, "States should declare bankrupt bankruptcy." I think, as I said yesterday, it's a really dumb idea. People are trying to talk about bringing the economy back, reopen, we have to get the economy moving again. And then rather than provide financial aid to the states that got hit by this economic tsunami through no fault of their own, the suggestion was made, states should declare bankruptcy. A few problems with that premise. Forget the morality of it and the ethics of it and the absurdity of it and the meanness of it. Legally, a state can't declare bankruptcy. You would need a federal law allowing states to declare bankruptcy. So to the Senate that proposed it, I say pass a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy. I dare you. And let the President sign that bill that says, "I give the states the legal ability to declare bankruptcy."
It's your suggestion, Senator McConnell, pass the law, I dare you. And then go to the president and say sign this bill allowing states to declare bankruptcy. You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that, allow states to declare bankruptcy legally because you passed the bill. It will be the first time in our nation's history that that happened. I dare you to do that. And then we'll see how many states actually take you up on it. I know I wouldn't. But if you believe what you said, and you have the courage of conviction because you're a man of your word, pass that bill if you weren't just playing politics. We'll see how long it takes him to do it.
Also moving on, voting, we still have elections in the midst of all this chaos. We have seen elections held where we had people on lines for a long period of time. It makes no sense to me to tell people you have to put your life at risk, violate social distancing to come out to vote. So, we passed an executive order that said you can vote by absentee. Today, I'masking the Board of Elections to send every New York voter what's called a - automatically receives a postage paid application for a ballot. If you want to vote, we should send you a ballot so you can vote, so you don't have to come out and get in a line.
Then looking ahead, more testing. We're making great progress on that. New York State is doing more testing than any state in the country right now. New York State is doing more tests than any country per capita on the globe right now. That is what will educate our moving forward. Watch the spread of the virus. It's getting warmer, more people are going to be coming out of their homes. That's going to happen naturally. Watch that spread. Testing gives you those numbers on an ongoing basis. Maintain social distancing. Also, plan on a reopening and not just reopening what was.
We went through this horrific experience. It should be a period of growth. It should be a period of reflection. If we're smart and we use it that way, there are lessons to learn here if we're smart and we have the courage to look in the mirror. We went through 9/11. Wewere smarter for it. We went through World War II. We were the better for it. We went through Superstorm Sandy. We learned, we grew and we were the better for it. We should do the same thing here. People have totally changed their lifestyle. What have we learned? How can we have a better health care system that can actually handle public health emergencies? How do we have a better transportation system? How do we have a smarter telemedicine system? How do we use technology and education better? Why do some children have to go to a parking lot to get Wi-Fi to do their homework? How do we learn from this and how do we grow?
And let New York lead the way because we're New York tough. But New York tough, when they say we're tough, yeah, we're tough, but we think tough incorporates being smart and being disciplined and being unified and being loving.
Last point I want to make and this is personal, not factual, my grandmother on my father's side, Mary, was a beautiful woman but tough. She was a tough lady. She was New York tough, gone through the depression, early immigrant, worked hard all her life. And she was a little roughhewn. She was roughhewn. I would say to her, "you know grandma, met this girl, met this guy, they're really nice." She would say "nice, how do you know they're nice? It's easy to be nice when everything is nice." I said grandma "what does that mean?" She said "you know when you know they're nice? When things get hard. That's when you know if they're nice. And I never really got it.
But her point was it's easy to be nice and kind and affable when everything is easy. You really get to see people and get to see character when things get hard, and when the pressure is on is when you really get to see true colors of a person and see what they're made of. It's almost as if the pressure just forces their character and the weaknesses explode or the strengths explode and that's what we've gone through. This is been hard. It's put everyone under pressure and you've really seen what people are made of. And you've really had a snapshot of what individuals are made of, and what we are made of as a collective. And personally, I'll tell you the truth. Some people break your heart. They just break your heart. People who I thought would rise to the occasion. People who I thought were strong, under pressure they just crumbled. They just crumbled.
On the other hand, you see people who you didn't expect anything from who just rise to the occasion, and you see the best and you see the worst. You just see the best and the worst of humanity, just comes up to the surface on both ends. It just, everything gets elevated, the strength in people and the weakness in people, the beauty in people and the ugliness in people - you see both. For me, the beauty you see and the strength that you see compensates and balances for the weakness. And I get inspired by the strength so I can tolerate the heartbreak of the weakness.
Here is a letter that I received that just sums it up.
Dear Mr. Cuomo, I seriously doubt that you will ever read this letter as I know you are busy beyond belief with a disaster that has befallen our country. We are a nation in crisis, of that there is no doubt. I'm a retired farmer hunkered down in northeast Kansas with my wife who has but one lung and occasional problems with her remaining lung. She also has diabetes. We are in our seventies now and frankly I am afraid for her. Enclosed, find a solitary N95 masks, left over from my forming. It has never been used. If you could would you please give this mask to a nurse or doctor in your state. I have kept four masks for my immediate family. Please keep on doing what you do so well. Which is to lead. Sincerely, Dennis and Sharon.
A farmer in northeast Kansas. His wife has one lung and diabetes. He has five masks. He sends one mask to New York for a doctor or nurse, keeps four masks. You want to talk about a snapshot of humanity? You have five masks. What do you do? You keep all five? Do you hide the five masks? Do you keep them for yourselves or others? No, you send one mask one mask to New York to help a nurse or a doctor. How beautiful is that? I mean how selfless is that? How giving is that? You know that's the nursing home in Niskayuna that sent one hundred ventilators down to New York City when they needed them. It's that love that courage that generosity of spirit that makes this country so beautiful. And makes Americans so beautiful, and it's that generosity of spirit, for me, makes up for all the ugliness that you see. Take one mask, I'll keep four. God bless America.
April 25, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Expansion of Diagnostic Testing Criteria to Include All First Responders, Health Care Workers and Essential Employees. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-expansion-diagnostic-testing-criteria
Issues Executive Order Allowing Pharmacists to Conduct Diagnostic Testing for COVID-19
State is Conducting Antibody Testing for Frontline Health Care Workers at Four New York City Hospitals and Health Care Systems
State Will Conduct Antibody Testing for First Responders and Transit Workers Starting Next Week
Confirms 10,553 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 282,143; New Cases in 57 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the state is expanding diagnostic testing criteria to include more frontline New York workers - a direct result of rapidly increasing diagnostic testing capacity. The expanded criteria will now allow all first responders, health care workers and essential employees to be tested for COVID-19 even if they aren't symptomatic. The state will continue to expand testing criteria as testing capacity increases.
Governor Cuomo also announced he will issue an Executive Order allowing pharmacists to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19. This action will unlock a network of over 5,000 pharmacies as COVID-19 testing locations and help the state build a collection network to meet laboratory capacity and increase overall testing capacity.
The Governor also announced the state is continuing to conduct antibody testing for frontline health care workers, including at four hospitals and health care systems in New York City today. The antibody testing will be conducted at Bellevue Hospital, Elmhurst Hospital Center, Montefiore Medical Center and SUNY Downstate Medical Center which is currently being used only for COVID-19 patients. Additionally, the state will begin conductI NG antibody testing for first responders and transit workers starting next week, including MTA employees and transit workers, New York State Police and the New York City Police Department.
We've been working with the federal government to increase the capacity of labs that process these diagnostic tests, and now we need more collection sites so we continue to ramp up our testing across the state.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
"We know that testing is a key component of re-opening the economy and getting to a new normal, and New York State is already doing more tests per capita than any state or country," Governor Cuomo said. "We've been working with the federal government to increase the capacity of labs that process these diagnostic tests, and now we need more collection sites so we continue to ramp up our testing across the state. I am issuing an Executive Order allowing our state's 5,000 pharmacies to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, which will greatly increase our testing capacity and allow us to expand eligibility for these tests to the frontline workers and essential employees who have been going to work and interacting with the public throughout this crisis."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 10,553 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 282,143 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 282,143 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
899
94
Allegany
35
4
Broome
251
19
Cattaraugus
45
6
Cayuga
47
8
Chautauqua
27
0
Chemung
103
24
Chenango
91
7
Clinton
54
1
Columbia
140
11
Cortland
28
3
Delaware
58
7
Dutchess
2,660
143
Erie
2,773
170
Essex
24
2
Franklin
14
1
Fulton
61
32
Genesee
141
14
Greene
107
17
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
56
0
Jefferson
59
1
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
58
14
Madison
121
15
Monroe
1,285
86
Montgomery
46
7
Nassau
33,798
1,033
Niagara
344
12
NYC
155,113
4,640
Oneida
364
41
Onondaga
664
25
Ontario
82
9
Orange
7,973
818
Orleans
75
15
Oswego
57
6
Otsego
60
10
Putnam
885
266
Rensselaer
221
23
Rockland
11,091
1,000
Saratoga
320
42
Schenectady
431
134
Schoharie
33
12
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
36
18
St. Lawrence
156
12
Steuben
204
33
Suffolk
31,368
762
Sullivan
689
61
Tioga
71
31
Tompkins
126
5
Ulster
1,166
190
Warren
132
10
Washington
113
30
Wayne
65
12
Westchester
27,231
598
Wyoming
57
14
Yates
16
5
April 25, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Expansion of Diagnostic Testing Criteria to Include All First Responders, Health Care Workers and Essential Employees. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-13
Issues Executive Order Allowing Pharmacists to Conduct Diagnostic Testing for COVID-19
State is Conducting Antibody Testing for Frontline Health Care Workers at Four New York City Hospitals and Health Care Systems
State Will Conduct Antibody Testing for First Responders and Transit Workers Starting Next Week
Confirms 10,553 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 282,143; New Cases in 57 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "We've said thank you to the first responders, and we meant it sincerely, and saying thank you is a good start. People want to know that they're appreciated. But even better than saying thank you, actions speak louder than words, right? So show me that you're thankful, and act like you're thankful, and get me the help I need. I'm out here doing my job, it's my public duty, I get it, but I'm sacrificing myself, I'm sacrificing my family, at least show me support. And support is you have the equipment you need, you have the tools you need, and we're going to get you testing on a priority basis, because you deserve it."
Cuomo: "Generations are called upon to deal with high levels of difficulty. We are called upon to deal with this crisis. Day 56. 1918 pandemic went on for two years. We're on day 56. World War I went on for four years. The Great Depression went on for four years. You want to talk about economic anxiety? You want to talk about people losing homes, not being able to feed themselves. People living in camps. People living in cars. World War II, six years. Vietnam War, that intensity every night, every night have to hear about the tragedies, went on for eight years. I get 56 days is a long time. I get it's the worst thing that we have experienced in modern history. I get that, but just a little bit of perspective."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the state is expanding diagnostic testing criteria to include more frontline New York workers - a direct result of rapidly increasing diagnostic testing capacity. The expanded criteria will now allow all first responders, health care workers and essential employees to be tested for COVID-19 even if they aren't symptomatic. The state will continue to expand testing criteria as testing capacity increases.
Governor Cuomo also announced he will issue an Executive Order allowing pharmacists to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19. This action will unlock a network of over 5,000 pharmacies as COVID-19 testing locations and help the state build a collection network to meet laboratory capacity and increase overall testing capacity.
The Governor also announced the state is continuing to conduct antibody testing for frontline health care workers, including at four hospitals and health care systems in New York City today. The antibody testing will be conducted at Bellevue Hospital, Elmhurst Hospital Center, Montefiore Medical Center and SUNY Downstate Medical Center which is currently being used only for COVID-19 patients. Additionally, the state will begin conducting NG antibody testing for first responders and transit workers starting next week, including MTA employees and transit workers, New York State Police and the New York City Police Department.
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.
April 26, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Outlines Phased Plan to Re-open New York Starting With Construction and Manufacturing. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines-phased-plan-re-open-new-york-starting
Plan Will Be Implemented in Phases and Based on Regional Analysis and Determinations
State Will Closely Monitor Hospitalization Rate and Public Health Impact During Each Phase of Re-Opening and Will Adjust Plan and Make Other Decisions Based on Those Indicators
Confirms 5,902 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 288,045; New Cases in 48 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today outlined a phased plan to re-open New York and re-imagine a new normal for the state starting with construction and manufacturing. The plan will be implemented in phases and will be based on regional analysis and determinations. Based on CDC recommendations, once a region experiences a 14-day decline in the hospitalization rate they may begin a phased re-opening. The State is closely monitoring the hospitalization rate, the infection rate and the number of positive antibody tests, as well as the overall public health impact, and will make adjustments to the plan and other decisions based on these indicators.
Phase one will include opening construction and manufacturing functions with low risk.
Phase two will open certain industries based on priority and risk level. 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. As the infection rate declines, the pace of reopening businesses will be increased.
The region must not open attractions or businesses that would draw a large number of visitors from outside the local area.
There will be two weeks in between each phase to monitor the effects of the re-opening and ensure hospitalization and infection rates are not increasing.
This plan will be implemented with multi-state coordination, especially in downstate New York. The plan will also coordinate the opening of transportation systems, parks, schools, beaches and businesses with special attention on summer activities for downstate, public housing and low-income communities, food banks and child care.
The phased re-opening will also be based on individual business and industry plans that include new measures to protect employees and consumers, make the physical work space safer and implement processes that lower risk of infection in the business. The state is consulting with local leaders in each region and industry to formulate these plans.
Every business leader understands that we can't just re-open and go back to where we were and what we were doing before - we have to move forward in light of the circumstances that have developed.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
"We've been talking about re-opening the state and re-imagining a new New York, and to do that we're going to have to make governmental decisions in partnership with business decisions," Governor Cuomo said. "Every business leader understands that we can't just re-open and go back to where we were and what we were doing before - we have to move forward in light of the circumstances that have developed. So we are going to re-open the economy in phases, based on regional and specific industry determinations and CDC guidelines, and in the midst of all this continuing to monitor the public health impact because all that progress we made by flattening that curve we could lose in a matter of days if we're not careful."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 5,902 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 288,045 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 288,045 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
948
49
Allegany
35
0
Broome
257
6
Cattaraugus
45
0
Cayuga
47
0
Chautauqua
29
2
Chemung
106
3
Chenango
93
2
Clinton
57
3
Columbia
143
3
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
58
0
Dutchess
2,729
69
Erie
2,954
181
Essex
24
0
Franklin
14
0
Fulton
62
1
Genesee
144
3
Greene
110
3
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
57
1
Jefferson
60
1
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
60
2
Madison
123
2
Monroe
1,316
31
Montgomery
47
1
Nassau
34,522
724
Niagara
368
24
NYC
158,258
3,145
Oneida
384
20
Onondaga
692
28
Ontario
84
2
Orange
8,106
133
Orleans
80
5
Oswego
61
4
Otsego
60
0
Putnam
904
19
Rensselaer
242
21
Rockland
11,256
165
Saratoga
330
10
Schenectady
449
18
Schoharie
35
2
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
38
2
St. Lawrence
167
11
Steuben
207
3
Suffolk
32,059
691
Sullivan
724
35
Tioga
71
0
Tompkins
126
0
Ulster
1,190
24
Warren
135
3
Washington
127
14
Wayne
65
0
Westchester
27,664
433
Wyoming
59
2
Yates
17
1
April 26, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Outlines Phased Plan to Re-open New York Starting With Construction and Manufacturing. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines
Plan Will Be Implemented in Phases and Based on Regional Analysis and Determinations
State Will Closely Monitor Hospitalization Rate and Public Health Impact During Each Phase of Re-Opening and Will Adjust Plan and Make Other Decisions Based on Those Indicators
Confirms 5,902 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 288,045; New Cases in 48 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "We're mutually dependent in that what I do can affect your health, but it really comes down to giving everybody the information so people can make their own decision, and the great achievement in this period has been that when people get the facts, and they trust the facts, and they understand the facts, they do the right thing. And that is a lesson that I hope people remember after this is all over. But, we still have to remember the facts. And we talk about reopening, we talk about re-imagining. Let's start to put some meat on the bones of what we're talking about so people understand."
Cuomo: "I think everybody went through a period where they analyzed their life and what they were doing and when somebody all of a sudden pulls the rug out from under you and you wind up in a different place, you know, you just see life differently and I think that's true for most people. Okay. After that reflection, what have we learned? How do we improve? How do we build back better? Because it's not about return to yesterday. There's no return to yesterday in life. It's about moving forward."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo outlined a phased plan to re-open New York and re-imagine a new normal for the state starting with construction and manufacturing. The plan will be implemented in phases and will be based on regional analysis and determinations. Based on CDC recommendations, once a region experiences a 14-day decline in the hospitalization rate they may begin a phased re-opening. The State is closely monitoring the hospitalization rate, the infection rate and the number of positive antibody tests, as well as the overall public health impact, and will make adjustments to the plan and other decisions based on these indicators.
Phase one will include opening construction and manufacturing functions with low risk.
Phase two will open certain industries based on priority and risk level. 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. As the infection rate declines, the pace of reopening businesses will be increased.
The region must not open attractions or businesses that would draw a large number of visitors from outside the local area.
There will be two weeks in between each phase to monitor the effects of the re-opening and ensure hospitalization and infection rates are not increasing.
This plan will be implemented with multi-state coordination, especially in downstate New York. The plan will also coordinate the opening of transportation systems, parks, schools, beaches and businesses with special attention on summer activities for downstate, public housing and low-income communities, food banks and child care.
The phased re-opening will also be based on individual business and industry plans that include new measures to protect employees and consumers, make the physical work space safer and implement processes that lower risk of infection in the business. The state is consulting with local leaders in each region and industry to formulate these plans.
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. Happy Sunday. Today's day 57. Feels like many more but it is only day 57, I can assure you. Just feels like 57 years. News today on the numbers is relatively good. The decent continues and that's a very good starting place. We are now back to where we were on March 31st, before we started this, dramatic increase in the number of cases. We're still watching big question is how fast does that number continue to come down, first, does that number continue to come down, because that would be a nightmare if it ticks up, and how fast does it come down and how low does it go, right. Before we started this, you only had a couple of hundred cases. When do we get back to a couple of hundred new COVID cases going in?
The overall hospitalization rate is down. The number of intubations is down. Even the number of new COVID cases is down. Still not good, still 1,000 new COVID cases, yesterday, to put it in focus. That would normally be terrible news. It's only not terrible news compared to where we were. This is just terrible news, 367 deaths, which is horrific and there is no relative context to death. Death is death, 367 people passed, 367 families. What I've been working from day one is to make sure that people understand the facts of what we're dealing with, because this is a unique situation.
Government really can't act unless the people fully support the action. What we have done here government couldn't do. It was a pure function of what people did. So my plan all along has been give people the facts, and if they have the facts, they will act responsibly. But, they have to have the facts. They have to buy into the plan. And it really is an individual decision, right? Who's taking care of your health? You are. We're mutually dependent in that what I do can affect your health, but it really comes down to giving everybody the information so people can make their own decision, and the great achievement in this period has been that when people get the facts, and they trust the facts, and they understand the facts, they do the right thing. And that is a lesson that I hope people remember after this is all over. But, we still have to remember the facts. And we talk about reopening, we talk about re-imagining. Let's start to put some meat on the bones of what we're talking about so people understand.
The federal guidance from the CDC is that before you start reopening the state and the regional hospitalization must be in decline for 14 days, okay. That's the CDC's guidance. The federal government leaves it up to the states, it's up to the governors, up to the governors, but they also give guidance, and in this case, I think the CDC guidance is right. So we're monitoring the hospitalization rate. We're monitoring the regional hospitalization rates. We said in this state, it's a very diverse state. Upstate regions are like states in the Midwest, even out west. And we have different hospitalization rates. We look at the rates across the state as well as across the regions. We're going to reopen in phases, a regional analysis on what we call our economic regions that we've been working with the state on, and those regions have been working together on economic policy, et cetera. So to analyze the regions which are existing coalitions, actually works. But look at a regional analysis. Make a determination and then monitor whatever you do. Phase one of reopening will involve construction and manufacturing activities. And within construction and manufacturing, those businesses that have a low risk, right. There's a range of construction activities. There's a range of manufacturing activities. But those businesses that pose a low risk within them.
Phase two would then be more a business by business analysis using the matrix that we've discussed. How essential a service does that business provide and how risky is that business? If you open that business, how much risk are you possibly incurring and how important is it that that business reopen? That matrix will be guiding us through phase two.
In phase two, when we get there, we need businesses to do that analysis. They have to think about how they're going to reopen with this quote, unquote new normal. What precautions are they going to take in the workplace? What safeguards are they going to put in place? It's very much going to be up to businesses. Then we're going to leave two weeks between phases so we can monitor the effect of what we just did. Take an action, monitor. Two weeks that's, according to the experts, the incubation period of the virus so you can actually see if you had an effect where you increased the rate of infection which you would then see in hospitalizations, testing, et cetera. Everyone understands the overall risk that you start to increase activity, the infection rate goes up, two weeks to actually do that monitoring.
That's the broad outlines of the reopening plan. Then you get into caveats. One caveat is you can't do anything in any region that would increase the number of visitors to that region. You have a whole multi-state region in lockdown here. It's possible that you open something in Syracuse or you open something in the North Country where you now see license plates coming in from Connecticut, New Jersey, people from downstate all coming to that area because they've been locked down and they're looking for an activity. So that's something that we have to pay attention to.
All of this is done in a multi-state context with our neighboring states, most relevant, especially downstate. Downstate is obviously the most complicated situation. That's New York City, that's Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk, the surrounding suburbs. Multi-state coordination is vital there because the New Jersey, Connecticut, New York City area is basically very intermixed. People are coming and going, they live in one place, they work in the other place. That coordination is important. You get upstate, coordination with Massachusetts is more important in some areas. Some parts of the state, Pennsylvania coordination is more important. Coordinating with those states that are neighbors to that region.
Downstate, we've said we have to coordinate the main activities. There are gears that intermesh. You can't turn one gear without turning the other gears. That's how you strip gears. Keep trying to explain to my daughters. Transportation, parks, schools, beaches - these are all coordinated activities. You turn one, they all have to turn. That's true for New York City, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, they all have to be coordinated. We're working with local businesses and leaders to do that.
Again, on the phased reopening, does my business reopen? Well, what is your business and how would you do your business in this new normal? You normally have people in a conference room, are you going to do that? You normally have people in work stations that are right next to each other, do you plan on reopening that way? This is not a one-sided equation here. Businesses, you develop plan on how you would reopen given everything we now know. If you have a plan, I'll show you in a moment, that actually takes into consideration these new circumstances, more essential, lower risk. The way a business opens will determine the risk. They can't really determine how essential their service is, but they can determine how risky opening their business would be.
We need them to be creative and think outside of the box. We've been speaking with business leaders across the state, but some people even need a new economic model. We want to bring sports back so there's an activity that people can watch on TV. What sports can you do without an audience? What sports can you make work economically where you don't have to sell a seat in the stadium or in the arena? How do you do drive-ins? How do you do different types businesses that could actually work in this environment? Again, they have to be creative and they have to think about it.
Downstate, which does have particular needs, we need summer activities in downstate New York. You can't tell people in a dense urban environment all through the summer months, we don't have anything for you to do, stay in your apartment with the three kids. You know, that doesn't work. There's a sanity equation here also that we have to take into consideration. Special attention for public housing residents. Special attention for low-income communities. That number one paid a higher price for this disease than anyone else. We talk about the racial disparity, African-Americans and Latinos. We're the increasing testing. We're going to have more to say on that this week, but lower-income communities need more assistance through this. I also need to focus -- we need to focus on the basics. We need more food banks, more food assistance. There are people who literally are struggling for food and for childcare. We have to make that more available. I want to bring in, in a coordinated way the philanthropies, there's a lot of good will, a lot of people want to help. Philanthropies represent a positive force in our society. I want to make them part of this in a partnership and we're doing that. So, working through all of this with partners in the business community and the health care community. Right, because we have an economic strategy and we have a public health strategy. It has to work with businesses, who are creative and more thoughtful. And health care professionals who just learned a very important lesson with what we went through and I don't want to lose that lesson.
In terms of businesses thinking about the new normal, think about it in terms of people. How are you going to protect your people? What are you going to be doing differently with your employees? Your actual physical space, what does the physical space look like when you reopen in this new normal? What are you doing about PPE equipment? How are you cleaning? What's the hygiene? What's the access? What's the screening? How do you move people? What's the travel and transportation? Then what processes can you put in place to make your business less risky, right? How can you train people? How you can communicate about this disease? Can you do testing in your workplace? These are all factors for businesses to consider that want to reopen quickly. Again, it's between the two -- it's governmental decisions in partnership with business decisions. Because I think every business leader gets, you can't go back to where you were. We have to go back in light of the circumstances that have developed.
In the midst of all this, monitor the public health impact. All that progress we made by flattening that curve, we could lose that in a matter of days if we're not careful. It's important that people understand what that actually means. This gets technical, but it's worth understanding. If I can understand it, anybody can understand it. They talk about the rate of increase of the spread of the infection, right? The R-naught factor. But it's basically straightforward. If one person infects less than one person, that's the first category of R-naught. One person infects less than one person. The next step up is one person infects one person who then infects another person, one to one to one to one to one. The worst situation is one person infects two people and then those two people go out and infect two people. That's fire through dry grass, right? Now you're in bad shape. That's where we were when this started. We were actually there before we even knew we were there. This is now the insight that the disease came from Europe to New York because it was already out of China by the time we realized it. It went to Europe, went to Italy, went to the Lombardi district, got on a plane, came to New York and it was here much earlier than we knew and it was spreading much earlier than we knew at a much higher rate.
We have to be down to the one person infects one other person. You can't really go beyond that margin. Right now, we're at .8. One person infects .8 percent of a person so one person is infecting less than one person. That is good news.
At that rate you see the virus declining. Upstate, interestingly, it's .9. Again, statistically very close but upstate the infection rate is one person infects .9 percent. Downstate, one person is infecting .75. Okay?
So that's where we are across the state. If we keep the infection rate below one person infecting one person, that is where the infection rate continues to drop. That's where you will see the curve dropping. So we have to stay there.
How do you monitor it? You have three basic dials. Number of hospitalizations, which you see every day which I show you every day, the number of hospitalizations, and you can see that by region.
The number of positive antibody tests - this is why testing is so important. We're doing antibody testing around the state in regions. Antibody testing tells you how many people have been infected - a little bit of a lag because you only have the antibodies after you have had the virus. But it tells you on a lag basis how many people have been infected.
The third dial is the diagnostic tests, which are just positive or negative. They tell you on an absolute basis what your infection rate is. Those are the three dials that you are watching. Take these activities, watch those three dials.
You have your hand on the valve, the activity valve. So you open the valve a little bit, phase one, watch those dials like a hawk, and then you adjust. That's called the RT factor, rate of transmission factor. What is the rate of transmission of the virus? We're now at about .8. You cannot go above 1.2. 1.2, you see that number go right back up again.
We will be sitting here talking about showing you a chart that showed up, down, and then up again. That's what happens if the rate of transmission gets to 1.2. So this is the balance that we collectively need to strike.
I want to get back to work, my kids want out of the house, I need to do something - I understand. We have to do it intelligently and this is the definition of intelligence in this context.
Also, I don't want to just reopen. We learned a lot of lessons here painfully. But we learned a lot of lessons and that's what reimagine means to me. How do we take the lessons we learned, take this pause in life and say, when we reopen we're going to be better for it and we're going to reimagine what our life is and we're going to improve for this pause?
Look, even on an individual level, you had time to decompress a little bit or compress for a different set of factors but I think everybody went through a period where they analyzed their life and what they were doing and when somebody all of a sudden pulls the rug out from under you and you wind up in a different place, you know, you just see life differently and I think that's true for most people. Okay. After that reflection, what have we learned? How do we improve? How do we build back better? Because it's not about return to yesterday. There's no return to yesterday in life. It's about moving forward. It's about taking your experience and what you learned and bringing it to a positive effect.
With that, I want to end on just sharing a story that me a lot. There's a tunnel in New York called the L-train tunnel. People in New York City know it very well. It's a tunnel that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn, and 400,000 people use this train and this tunnel. 400,000 people is a larger group than many cities in this country have, okay. So they had to close down the tunnel because the tunnel was old and the tunnel had problems and everybody looked at it and they said, we have to close down the tunnel. 400,000 people couldn't get to work without that train, and they had all these complicated plans on how they were going to mitigate the transportation problem and different buses and different cars and different bikes and different horses, the whole alternative transportation. And this went on for years.
Everyone said, you had to close the tunnel and it was going to be closed for 15 to 18 months. Now when government says it's going to be closed for 15 to 18 months, I hear 24 months to the rest of your life. That's my governmental cynicism. But that was the plan. We're going to close it down, rebuild the tunnel, 15 months to 18 months, the MTA. This was going to be a massive disruption. I heard a lot of complaints. I get a few smart people, Cornell engineers, Columbia engineers, we go down into the tunnel. And we look at it. And the engineers say, you know what? There's a different way to do this. And they talk about techniques that they use in Europe. And they say not only could we bring these techniques here, and we wouldn't have to shut down the tunnel at all. Period. We could just stop usage at nights and on weekends and we can make all of the repairs. And we can do it with a partial closure for 15 months.
The opposition to this new idea was an explosion. I was a meddler, I didn't have an engineering degree, they were outside experts, how dare you question the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy knows better. It was a thunderstorm of opposition. but we did it anyway, and we went ahead with it. And we rebuilt the tunnel, and the tunnel is now done better than before, with all these new techniques. It opens today. It opens today. And the proof is in the pudding, right? We went through this period of, I don't believe it, this is interference.
It opened today. And it opens today not in 15 months, but actually in only 12 months of a partial shutdown. So it's ahead of schedule, it's under budget, and it was never shut down. I relay this story because you can question and you should question why we do what we do. Why do we do it that way? I know that's how we've always done it, but why do we do it that way? And why can't we do it a different way? Why not try this? Why not try that? People don't like change, you know. We think we like change but we don't really like change. We like control more than anything, right?
So it's hard, it's hard to make change. It's hard to make change in your own life, let alone on a societal collective level. But if you don't change, you don't grow. And if you don't run the risk of change, you don't have the benefit of advancement. Not everything out there has to be the way it is. So we just went through this wild period where people are walking around with masks. Not because I said to, but because they understand they need to. How do we make it better? How do we make it better? And let's use this period to do just that. And we will. And we'll reimagine and we'll make it a reality because we are New York tough and smart and disciplined and unified and loving and because we know that we can. We know that we can. We showed that we can.
April 27, 2020.
Video, Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo Remarks on Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-remarks-kentucky-governor-andy-beshear
Governor Cuomo: "It is hard for a governor, especially Andy, who is a relatively new governor, to stand up to a senior official and speak truth to power. That is hard. Takes guts. Takes courage. And you don't get that from a typical politician."
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:
Last point, A.J. Parkinson, great quote, "I respect elected officials who aren't typical politicians." Elected official does not have to be a politician. Politician has bad connotations to politicians. The word politician. You can be an elected official who is not a typical politician. Not a go along, get along kind of guy. You know, not a make no waves kind of guy.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear stood up, said to his senior senator in the state, Mitch McConnell that Mitch McConnell was wrong on saying he wouldn't provide funding to state and local governments and wrong in saying states should go bankrupt. It is hard for a governor, especially Andy, who is a relatively new governor, to stand up to a senior official and speak truth to power. That is hard. Takes guts. Takes courage. And you don't get that from a typical politician. So, it warms my heart to see an elected official who is not a typical politician. Thank you, Governor.
April 27, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Phase II Results of Antibody Testing Study Show 14.9% of Population Has COVID-19 Antibodies. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-phase-ii-results-antibody-testing-study
State is Expanding Antibody Testing Survey to Test FDNY and NYPD Officers, Health Care Workers and Transit Workers
State is Opening Five New Drive-Through Testing Facilities in Monroe, Erie, Broome, Niagara and Oneida Counties
State is Providing $25 Million for Food Banks and Providers Most Impacted by COVID-19
Announces Nourish New York Initiative to Purchase Food and Products from Upstate Farms and Direct it to Food Banks Across the State
Two Million Bottles of NYS Clean Hand Sanitizer Have Been Distributed Across All 62 Counties
Confirms 3,951 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 291,996; New Cases in 43 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the results of phase two of the state's antibody testing survey. The preliminary results show 14.9 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies. The preliminary results of phase one of the state's antibody testing survey released on April 23rd showed 13.9 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies.
The Governor also announced the state is expanding its antibody testing survey starting today to further determine the spread of infections among frontline workers and first responders. The state is testing today 1,000 New York City Fire Department officers and 1,000 New York City Police Department officers from across all five boroughs, and this week will test 3,000 health care workers and 1,000 transit workers for antibodies.
The Governor also announced the state is opening five new drive-through testing facilities in Monroe, Erie, Broome, Niagara and Oneida Counties. On Saturday, the state expanded diagnostic testing criteria to include all first responders, health care workers and essential employees even if they aren't symptomatic. These individuals will be able to get tested for COVID-19 at these new drive-through facilities. 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.
Amid a large surge in demand at food banks across the state, the Governor also announced the state is providing $25 million from the state's special public health emergency fund for food banks and providers most impacted by COVID-19. The state isalso asking any philanthropies that would like to help the state's food banks to contact Fran Barrett, Director of Non-Profits at COVIDPhilanthropies@exec.ny.gov.
If you look back in history, sometimes it takes a crisis to wake people up, and when it comes to re-opening the state we have to use this moment to re-imagine a new New York and be smart and grow from this experience.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
The Governor also announced the launch of the Nourish New York Initiative to purchase food and products from Upstate farms and direct it to food banks across the state. The state will also be partnering with the state's dairy producers - Chobani, Dairy Farmers of America, Upstate Niagara, Cabot Cheese and others - to process excess milk into products like yogurt, cheese, sour cream and cream cheese, that will be distributed to food banks and those in need. The Nourish New York Initiative will be led by:
Kelly Cummings, Director of State Operations and Infrastructure
Richard Ball, Commissioner of Agriculture
Rossana Rosado, Secretary of State
Karim Camara, Executive Director of the Office of Faith-Based Community Development Services
Fran Barrett, Director of Non-Profits
Mike Hein, Commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance
The Governor also announced that two million bottles of NYS Clean hand sanitizer have been distributed across all 62 counties to date. The hand sanitizer has been distributed to hospitals, nursing homes, food banks, food handlers, Red Cross, first responders, schools and colleges, healthcare workers, homeless organizations, law enforcement, unions, transportation systems and faith-based organizations
"If you look back in history, sometimes it takes a crisis to wake people up, and when it comes to re-opening the state we have to use this moment to re-imagine a new New York and be smart and grow from this experience," Governor Cuomo said. "The NYS on PAUSE regulations are set to expire statewide on May 15th and some regions may be ready to begin re-opening at that time, but we have to be smart about it and make sure each industry and business is putting the necessary precautions in place so the infection rate doesn't go back up. Antibody and diagnostic testing will be a key component of our phased re-opening because it tells us the people who were infected and have now resolved, as well as the overall infection rate across the state."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 3,951 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 291,996 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 291,996 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
979
31
Allegany
35
0
Broome
261
4
Cattaraugus
45
0
Cayuga
48
1
Chautauqua
30
1
Chemung
108
2
Chenango
95
2
Clinton
59
2
Columbia
146
3
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
58
0
Dutchess
2,793
64
Erie
3,021
67
Essex
24
0
Franklin
14
0
Fulton
62
0
Genesee
148
4
Greene
111
1
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
58
1
Jefferson
60
0
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
62
2
Madison
124
1
Monroe
1,331
15
Montgomery
47
0
Nassau
34,865
343
Niagara
378
10
NYC
160,489
2,231
Oneida
397
13
Onondaga
726
34
Ontario
86
2
Orange
8,238
132
Orleans
80
0
Oswego
61
0
Otsego
62
2
Putnam
925
21
Rensselaer
246
4
Rockland
11,366
110
Saratoga
336
6
Schenectady
457
8
Schoharie
35
0
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
38
0
St. Lawrence
169
2
Steuben
209
2
Suffolk
32,470
411
Sullivan
748
24
Tioga
71
0
Tompkins
126
0
Ulster
1,219
29
Warren
147
12
Washington
130
3
Wayne
69
4
Westchester
28,007
343
Wyoming
63
4
Yates
17
0
April 27, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Phase II Results of Antibody Testing Study Show 14.9% 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-14
State is Expanding Antibody Testing Survey to Test FDNY and NYPD Officers, Health Care Workers and Transit Workers
State is Opening Five New Drive-Through Testing Facilities in Monroe, Erie, Broome, Niagara and Oneida Counties
Temporary Medical Centers at the Javits Center, Westchester County Center, SUNY Old Westbury and SUNY Stonybrook Will Be Put on Hold for the Fall Flu Season
State is Providing $25 Million for Food Banks and Providers Most Impacted by COVID-19
Announces Nourish New York Initiative to Purchase Food and Products from Upstate Farms and Direct it to Food Banks Across the State
Two Million Bottles of NYS Clean Hand Sanitizer Have Been Distributed Across All 62 Counties
Confirms 3,951 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 291,996; New Cases in 43 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "Know what you are doing before you do it. Those are words to live by... We want to un-pause. May 15 is when the pause regulations expire statewide... But you have to be smart about it. We all have to be smart about it. As we said there is no light switch where you flip a switch and everybody goes back to doing what they are doing. We have to take these circumstances into consideration. We have to learn the lessons, we have to move forward and we have to be smart because if you are not smart you will see that infection rate go right back to where it was."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the results of phase two of the state's antibody testing survey. The preliminary results show 14.9 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies. The preliminary results of phase one of the state's antibody testing survey released on April 23rd showed 13.9 percent of the population have COVID-19 antibodies.
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:
Big Monday crowd. Hope you guys have a good weekend. Welcome back. I had a very nice weekend, not that anybody is asking. Nice weekend with the girls and boyfriend. I like the boyfriend. If anyone asks, boyfriend has departed the premises.
Monday. This is the total hospitalization rate which you see is basically flat. Flat is not great, but flat may be a reaction to the weekend, Sunday discharges may be down. We have the same question, how fast and how steady is the decline? We don't want to see flat, we want to see an increase in decline. We want to see how fast that decline goes and how low does the decline go. When does that hospitalization rate get down to a truly manageable number? When does the incoming case number get down to a manageable number?
You see again overall hospitalization rate is on the decline. Again, yesterday little less than we would like to see. Hopefully it was a Sunday anomaly because of the weekend. Intubations is down. Number of new cases still 1,000 new COVID cases every day, puts it in perspective. Down a tad from where it was, but again these weekend numbers sometimes are a little strange. Number of lives lost, 337. Still tragically high, but on the decline if you look at it over the past few days. Not that that gives any solace to 337 families who are suffering today.
On testing, this has been a big topic, increasing testing. It's been a scramble for all the states. We're doing well on it. The testing tells you where we are and whether the infection rate is going up or going down. We've now tested 7,500 people statewide so that's a very significant number and it gives us a snapshot of where we are. Just a snapshot, but snapshot, snapshot, snapshot. You look at the different pictures and you have a movie at one point and you can track what is happening. With 7,500 people the percent statewide that's positive is 14.9. When we tested five days ago it was 13.9, 13.9 to 14.9, one point, statistically it's in the margin of error. I'd like to see the margin go the other way.
Male, female they both went up a point. Men are still more likely to have the virus than women by a couple of points. Whatever that bespeaks, I care not to speculate. These are the regional numbers in broad strokes. Long Island, 14; New York City is up a couple of point. Westchester, Rockland is up a couple of points. The rest of the state is basically flat. This is the infection rate by region. People hear "New York" they think New York City. Yes, we have New York City, we also have upstate New York, North Country, which is predominantly rural or suburban and you see different situations across this state. This is not a homogeneous state. So the Mohawak Valley, 2.6 percent; North Country it's 1.2 percent. Capital District, 2.1; Hudson Valley 10 percent, but that Westchester and Rockland in it. Central New York, 1.3; Southern Tier, Finger Lakes, Western New York, 7.1. Western New York is the high point of upstate. Hudson Valley, again, has Westchester, Rockland. We had a significant problem in Westchester, less so in Rockland so I think that skews that number. When you see 1.2 percent in the North County, 2.6 Mohawk Valley, Capital District, you see a much different situation than you're looking at in New York City where you're in the 20s. Different situations, different strategy going forward.
We are coordinating as a state. We are coordinating with our neighboring states. But you still have to take into consideration the variations across the state and that's what we are trying to navigate.
By race, you see the percent for Asians has ticked up, African-Americans actually down. Latinos went up 10 percent. Nobody can explain what caused that jump in this survey and it's something we are going to watch and we are doing more testing in lower income communities and African-American and Latino communities as we discussed.
And the age breakdown is fairly consistent with where it was. So that's where we are today in New York. New York City, obviously, high point number of cases in the country, higher than some countries globally, and upstate New York a very different reality.
Big question is reopening, especially for those places with less of an issue to begin with or places that have reduced their problems and I get a lot of local officials who are calling me. We want to talk about reopening, reopening, reopening.
Know what you are doing before you do it. Those are words to live by. I don't know who said it but it is a true axiom. We want to un-pause. May 15 is when the pause regulations expire statewide. I will extend them in many parts of the state. But in some parts of the state some regions you could make the case that we should un-pause on May 15.
But you have to be smart about it. We all have to be smart about it. As we said there is no light switch where you flip a switch and everybody goes back to doing what they are doing. We have to take these circumstances into consideration. We have to learn the lessons, we have to move forward and we have to be smart because if you are not smart you will see that infection rate go right back to where it was. We will be right back to where we were 58 days ago and nobody wants to do that.
So what I want to say to my regional colleagues is, be smart. Well, we want to reopen. Well, have you thought through reopening? And we have a couple of weeks, but start thinking through what it means to reopen. First question is, do we meet the CDC guidelines that say you reopen when you see a decline in numbers for 14 days?
Second, we talked about on the reopening bringing back construction and manufacturing as the first two industries, but how do you bring them back and what precautions are going to be in place? What precautions do you want those businesses to institute when they start? And part of this is on business. You know your business. I don't know your business. I don't know how you do business. How do you incorporate into how you do your business and where you do your business, the precautions that we want to take going forward? How do you do social distancing, how do you do monitoring, are you going to take the temperature of people who walk in the door, et cetera, and that's for government but it's also a question for business.
Healthcare capacity - you want to reopen a region. What is the healthcare capacity in that region? How many beds will you have available if that number goes up? How many ICU beds will you have available? Are you contemplating what's going to happen when the flu season kicks in in September where we could potentially now be dealing with COVID cases on top of flu cases - you have to test for both and possibly have hospital capacity for both.
Do we have testing in place? Is testing ready to go because testing is one of the main monitors, right? Do we have a tracing system in place? We all talk about testing tracing, isolating - that has to be in place. Test people, you then trace the contacts, you find the positive people and you isolate them. But you need a tracing system and this is something we have never done before, right? So that system has to be in place.
When we isolate people, where do they go? Isolation, once you find the person who is positive, basically you can say to the person, look, you can go home, but then you run the risk of infecting those people in your house. Or we could put you in an isolation facility. We have a hotel, et cetera, that we can put you in for two weeks. But you have to locate those facilities first.
We have to coordinate as a region. There is no one county in a region. It's a region. And these are the Regional Economic Development Council regions that have worked together. But we have to coordinate that region. So everybody in that region has to have the same policy when it comes to schools, when it comes to transportation, when it comes to testing, when it comes to tracing and that region's plan has to fit into our overall multistate plan. No attractive nuisances, attractive nuisances is a legal concept where you have a potentially dangerous situation that actually attracts people, normally children, to it. We can't open an attraction that might bring many people from outside the region and then overwhelm people in that region. You have a lot of pent-up demand and we have seen this before where when we are not coordinated, we have New York people going to Connecticut because Connecticut has parks or waterside access that's open. We don't want to create a situation where people flood an area because they are looking for something to do.
And then we need a regional control room, I call it. We have to be monitoring what happens when we start to reopen, and that entire region has to have a control room function where we are watching what's happening. For those friends who are more graphic, we are going to turn the valve on reopening, turn it a little bit, start to reopen, and then you watch the dials. What are the dials? Hospitalization rate, which we know now, we have been watching that. What does the antibody testing tell you? Antibody testing is important because it tells you the people who were infected, the infection rate, and now resolved because they have antibodies. What is the diagnostic testing, which is different type of testing, tell you? Positive and negative. But what's happening on the diagnostic testing? Those dials will give you the fourth dial, which is the infection rate, what's called the RT rate, the rate of transmission. so turn that valve a little bit for a region, watch those four gauges very carefully every day, see what's happening on those gauges. You can either close the valve, open the valve a little bit more or leave the valve where it is. But when I talk about the regional control room, that's what I'm talking about.
Getting that data in to one central place where everybody agrees on the numbers and everybody agrees on what we do is the next step. We have medical centers that were built. I spoke to President Trump about this this morning. When we were worried about the lack of capacity in the hospital system, the federal government was good enough to send in the Army Corps of Engineers. They did a phenomenal job in building beds quickly. We built a number of facilities. We are now talking about possibility of a second wave of the COVID virus or COVID combining with the regular flu season in September, which could be problematic again for the hospital capacity. So the facilities that were built, I spoke to the President about leaving them in place until we get through the flu season. God forbid we need extra capacity again. I don't want to have built - ask the federal government to build capacity, then take it down and then wind up in another problem area.
Javits Center, we have to think about because the Javits center is in the Javits convention center. It has 2,500 beds, so it's a great facility, but it's also in the convention center. You can't reopen the convention center, obviously, when it has the hospital beds in it. Westchester County Center, the same issue. It's also the Westchester Convention Center. So question mark on those facilities when we take them down or how we take them down. I'm going to speak to the County Executive in Westchester County, George Latimer, about that. Javits will be on hold for both facilities, now until we decide. But again, anticipate an issue in the future and make sure we're ready. But I want to thank, again, the Army Corps of Engineers, did a fantastic job. President Trump got it done and he got it done very quickly. So, those facilities, Javits, you know over 1,000 people went through Javits. We didn't need the whole facility but 1,000 people is a large number of people.
On Saturday, as you know, we expanded our diagnostic testing criteria for frontline workers, essential workers, et cetera. We'll be opening additional drive-through testing sites for those people this week. People can't just show up at a drive-through center. You have to call first, make an appointment, so we can handle the flow. We're also very concerned about making sure we get testing to our essential workers and our frontline workers.
We're going to be doing a survey of New York City fire department and New York City police department. This week, 1,000 and 1,000 respectively, just to find out again with the antibody testing, what is the infection rate. NYPD was out there every day and they paid a terrible toll. The attendance rate is now good again, many were out sick. But we want to know exactly where those frontline workers are, if they have been infected, we want to make sure people are getting help and we want to know exactly what happened. We'll also be doing 3,000 healthcare workers, these are hospital staff, nursing staff, doctors who are in the emergency rooms, to find out their situation. And we'll be doing 1,000 transit workers. These are the bus drivers, the train operators, who keep the public transit system working and we want to do testing to find out how they're doing.
We're seeing a tremendous demand in food banks, which is predictable in some ways. But, the numbers are very, very high, and we need to address it. 200 percent increase in Westchester, 100 percent increase New York City, 40 percent on Long Island, 40 to 60 percent across Upstate New York. So we're going to commit $25 million for emergency funding for those food banks. I'm also asking philanthropies to help. Many philanthropies said they wanted to help and step up. This is a, I would say the number one thing they can do to help, and if they are interested, please let us know and we'll supplement the state funding with philanthropies funding.
We also have an issue across upstate where, because the markets are so roiled, some farm cooperatives are actually dumping milk because the market can't consume it. This is just total waste to me. We have people downstate who need food. We have farmers upstate who can't sell their product. We have to put those two things together. It's just common sense. But we have to make that marriage between product upstate and need downstate. And we're going to launch a special initiative to do that. We're also immediately to stop this dumping of milk, going to work with industries in our state who can use the milk and get it to people who need it. So I want to thank these companies who will be working with us to buy the excess milk, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, and then we'll give it to the food banks that are downstate.
When it comes to reopening, and I talked about what I'm going to speak with the regions about, but I don't want to just do reopening. We have to use this moment to reimagine and be smart and grow. This is one of those moments. If you look back in history, sometimes it takes a crisis to wake people up, and it takes a crisis to change the body politic to actually accept change, because change is hard to make, and if you look at the instances in the past where we've had significant problems, you'll see we were normally smart enough to learn and to grow from them.
So, reimagine New York means don't replace what was, build it back better and we have done that in the past. Chicago fire, 1871, killed 300 people, but we learned stricter fire safety laws. San Francisco earthquake, 1906, the same thing was devastating, but that led to better construction and earthquake standards. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire here in New York, 1911, started a whole workers' rights movement and safety in the workplace. Mississippi flood 1927, that's when the Flood Control Act started and we woke up and started building levees and dams, etcetera. Great Depression, FDR pivoted from that crisis to an entire new economic structure. We went through 9/11 and we are better and safer as a society for it. Department of Homeland Security was formed on the federal side, which has been the single largest innovation in the federal government. Even Superstorm Sandy that we went through, 2012, I was part of that. It was devastating, but New York is better for it. We have a power grid that's now better. We raised all of our electric stations. We changed our infrastructure along the waterfront. We built houses back to different code. So, it's that process that we have to go through here. What did at the learn? How do we change? How do we improve?
We talked about tele-education, yeah, we went through it, we had to go through it, but it didn't go as well as it could have gone. We didn't have any notice. But let's learn the lessons. Let's do better. Telemedicine showed great potential. You don't have to go to the doctor's office. You can do a lot by telemedicine. How did we learn that? Public transportation, we're still learning. How do we clean and disinfect a public transportation system on a daily basis? I mean, just think about the scale of that undertaking. How do you do it? We're still trying to figure it out. And then how do you have a better public health system? Because we were not ready for this. Our health system was not ready for any public health crisis that would demand more capacity or more coordination. So, let's learn from that.
And let's have a society that is more social equity. You look at the people who paid the highest price for this crisis. They were the people who were in the least good position to pay. The poorest among us always pay the highest price. Why is that? Why do the lower income communities see this disease in higher proportions? Why were the essential workers who had to show up disproportionately African- American, Latino?
So, is life going to be different? Yes, life is going to be different. But different in this case can mean better if we're smart about it. And when we are finished going through this, we should be tougher and smarter and more resilient and more unified and better than before. Last point, A.J. Parkinson, great quote, "I respect elected officials who aren't typical politicians." Elected official does not have to be a politician. Politician has bad connotations to politicians. The word politician. You can be an elected official who is not a typical politician. Not a go along, get along kind of guy. You know, not a make no waves kind of guy.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear stood up, said to his senior senator in the state, Mitch McConnell that Mitch McConnell was wrong on saying he wouldn't provide funding to state and local governments and wrong in saying states should go bankrupt. It is hard for a governor, especially Andy, who is a relatively new governor, to stand up to a senior official and speak truth to power. That is hard. Takes guts. Takes courage. And you don't get that from a typical politician. So, it warms my heart to see an elected official who is not a typical politician. Thank you, Governor.
April 28, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Outlines Additional Guidelines for Phased Plan to Re-open New York. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines-additional-guidelines-phased-plan-re
Announces Creation of New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board
Confirms 3,110 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 295,106; New Cases in 44 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today outlined additional guidelines for the phased plan to re-open New York on a regional basis. Each region of the state - Capital Region, Central New York, Finger Lakes, Mid-Hudson Valley, Mohawk Valley, New York City, North Country, Long Island, Southern Tier and Western New York - must follow these guidelines as part of the re-opening plan.
CDC Guidelines: Based on CDC recommendations, once a region experiences a 14-day decline in the hospitalization rate they may begin a phased re-opening.
Industries: Businesses in each region will re-open in phases. Phase one will include opening construction and manufacturing functions with low risk. Phase two will open certain industries based on priority and risk level. 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.
Business Precautions: Each business and industry must have a plan to protect employees and consumers, make the physical work space safer and implement processes that lower risk of infection in the business.
Building Health Care Capacity: To maintain the phased re-opening plan, each region must have at least 30 percent of hospital beds and ICU beds available after elective surgeries resume.
Testing Regimen: Regions must implement a testing regimen that prioritizes symptomatic persons and individuals who came into contact with a known COVID-positive person, and conducts frequent tests of frontline and essential workers. Regions must maintain an appropriate number of testing sites to accommodate its population and must fully advertise where and how people can get tested. The region must also use the collected data to track and trace the spread of the virus.
Tracing System: There must be at least 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people. The region must also monitor the regional infection rate throughout the re-opening plan.
Isolation Facilities: Regions must present plans to have rooms available for people who test positive for COVID-19 and who cannot self-isolate.
Regional Coordination: Regions must coordinate the re-opening of schools, transportation systems, testing and tracing with other surrounding regions.
Re-imagining Tele-Medicine
Re-imagining Tele-Education
Regional Control Rooms: Each region must appoint an oversight institution as its control room to monitor regional indicators during the phased re-opening, including hospital capacity, rate of infection, PPE burn rate and businesses.
Protect and Respect Essential Workers: Regions must continue to ensure protections are in place for essential workers.
We've come up with a phased plan to re-open New York so every region in the state has the same opening template as we begin this process.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor Cuomo also announced the creation of the New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board to help guide the state's re-opening strategy. The advisory board will be chaired by Former Secretaries to the Governor Steve Cohen and Bill Mulrow and includes over 100 business, community and civic leaders from industries across the state. A list of the members of the advisory board is available here.
"We've come up with a phased plan to re-open New York so every region in the state has the same opening template as we begin this process," Governor Cuomo said. "We have to be smart about this - emotions can't drive our re-opening process - and we've come up with factual data points that each region must monitor as they begin to re-open. We've also created a New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board made up of business, academic, community and civic leaders from across the state to help guide this process and ensure businesses are following the necessary guidelines to preserve public health as we work towards a new normal."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 3,110 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 295,106 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 295,106 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
County
Total Positive
New Positive
Albany
1,009
30
Allegany
35
0
Broome
266
5
Cattaraugus
45
0
Cayuga
48
0
Chautauqua
30
0
Chemung
113
5
Chenango
95
0
Clinton
59
0
Columbia
154
8
Cortland
28
0
Delaware
59
1
Dutchess
2,817
24
Erie
3,089
68
Essex
26
2
Franklin
14
0
Fulton
66
4
Genesee
149
1
Greene
112
1
Hamilton
3
0
Herkimer
58
0
Jefferson
60
0
Lewis
9
0
Livingston
65
3
Madison
126
2
Monroe
1,371
40
Montgomery
49
2
Nassau
35,085
220
Niagara
386
8
NYC
162,338
1,849
Oneida
411
14
Onondaga
742
16
Ontario
90
4
Orange
8,374
136
Orleans
80
0
Oswego
63
2
Otsego
65
3
Putnam
932
7
Rensselaer
250
4
Rockland
11,453
87
Saratoga
343
7
Schenectady
469
12
Schoharie
38
3
Schuyler
7
0
Seneca
38
0
St. Lawrence
170
1
Steuben
210
1
Suffolk
32,724
254
Sullivan
769
21
Tioga
82
11
Tompkins
126
0
Ulster
1,230
11
Warren
150
3
Washington
131
1
Wayne
70
1
Westchester
28,245
238
Wyoming
63
0
Yates
17
0
April 28, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Outlines Additional Guidelines for Phased Plan to Re-Open New York. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-outlines-0
Announces Creation of New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board
Confirms 3,110 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 295,106; New Cases in 44 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "We have to coordinate regionally, schools, tracing this all has to be coordinated on a multi-county effort. We have to reimagine tele-medicine. Reimagine tele-education. We have to have a regional control room that is monitoring all of these indicators and gives us the danger sign if we get over 70% capacity, if the infection rate pops up. We have to have one central source that is monitoring all these dials, that hits the danger button so you could actually slow down the reopening."
Cuomo: "[The] regional control room, where you're monitoring all of those metrics, you're monitoring hospital capacity, the rate of infection, the PPE burn rate, how businesses are complying. And it has an emergency switch that we can throw if any one of those indicators are problematic because, remember, we have gone through hell and back over the past 60 or so days."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today outlined additional guidelines for the phased plan to re-open New York on a regional basis. Each region of the state - Capital Region, Central New York, Finger Lakes, Mid-Hudson Valley, Mohawk Valley, New York City, North Country, Long Island, Southern Tier and Western New York - must follow these guidelines as part of the re-opening plan.
CDC Guidelines: Based on CDC recommendations, once a region experiences a 14-day decline in the hospitalization rate they may begin a phased re-opening.
Industries: Businesses in each region will re-open in phases. Phase one will include opening construction and manufacturing functions with low risk. Phase two will open certain industries based on priority and risk level. 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.
Business Precautions: Each business and industry must have a plan to protect employees and consumers, make the physical work space safer and implement processes that lower risk of infection in the business.
Building Health Care Capacity: To maintain the phased re-opening plan, each region must have at least 30 percent of hospital beds and ICU beds available after elective surgeries resume.
Testing Regimen: Regions must implement a testing regimen that prioritizes symptomatic persons and individuals who came into contact with a known COVID-positive person, and conducts frequent tests of frontline and essential workers. Regions must maintain an appropriate number of testing sites to accommodate its population and must fully advertise where and how people can get tested. The region must also use the collected data to track and trace the spread of the virus.
Tracing System: There must be at least 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people. The region must also monitor the regional infection rate throughout the re-opening plan.
Isolation Facilities: Regions must present plans to have rooms available for people who test positive for COVID-19 and who cannot self-isolate.
Regional Coordination: Regions must coordinate the re-opening of schools, transportation systems, testing and tracing with other surrounding regions.
Re-imagining Tele-Medicine
Re-imagining Tele-Education
Regional Control Rooms: Each region must appoint an oversight institution as its control room to monitor regional indicators during the phased re-opening, including hospital capacity, rate of infection, PPE burn rate and businesses.
Protect and Respect Essential Workers: Regions must continue to ensure protections are in place for essential workers.
Governor Cuomo also announced the creation of the New York Forward Re-Opening Advisory Board to help guide the state's re-opening strategy. The advisory board will be chaired by Former Secretaries to the Governor Steve Cohen and Bill Mulrow and includes over 100 business, community and civic leaders from industries across the state. A list of the members of the advisory board is available here.
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 to everyone. I want to introduce, for those of you that don't know, my colleagues who are with me. To my left, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor. To my right, Dr. James Malatras, he is not a real doctor like the doctors here, but he is still technically a doctor. He runs Empire State College. He has done all great policy work in the State for many years. To his right, Gareth Rhodes, he is not a doctor either. Well, technically he is a doctor too, an attorney is a doctor. He is Department of Financial Services but has worked with me in the State for many years and he has been a great talent here.
It is a pleasure to be here today. We are in Syracuse, the State University of New York Upstate Medical School and Hospital. We had chance to say hello to the nurses and doctors who work here. Got to wave from a social distance. But I wanted to say thank you for all they've done here. We also sent a team down to New York City. So, it has just been an extraordinary experience. But we have seen the good, the bad, the ugly in all of this, and the good is beautiful.
Let me talk to you about some of the facts that we are dealing with today. Facts are our friend. People want to make decisions, they want to know the facts without spin, without opinion, and that is what we have been giving them. Total hospitalization rate is down a tick, which is good news. The change in hospitalization on the rolling total you see is down. Number of intubations is also down. The number of COVID hospitalizations per day, these are new people who are newly diagnosed with COVID, it is under one thousand which is good news. It is still a significant number of people, 900 people. After all of this, we still have 900 new infections yesterday on a three day rolling average. But overall number is going down. So, that's good news. This is the worst news every day. I think maybe today is the day the nightmare will be over - but it is not. 335 people passed away yesterday from this virus in this state. That's 335 families. You see this number is basically reducing but not at a tremendous rate. And the only thing tremendous is number of New Yorkers who still pass away.
Everybody is talking about reopening. I get it. You can't sustain being closed. The economy can't sustain it. Individual families can't sustain it. We can't sustain it on a personal level. Our children can't sustain it. But, we have to. When we talk about reopening, this should not be a political discussion, it shouldn't be a philosophical discussion, shouldn't be because people are protesting or, some people want it, some people don't want it. It is a factual discussion on reopening, right? So, let's demystify it a little bit because in this environment, it is becoming rhetorical rather than factual.
We want to reopen, but we want to do it without infecting more people or overwhelming the hospital system. We're at upstate medical today. Our great fear was the number of people infected would overwhelm the hospital capacity. So, that is the balance. Reopen but don't increase the number of infected people and don't overwhelm the hospital system. Well, then design that system in reopening, right? You can factually with data design a system that does just that. And that's what government is supposed to do. Government is not about spouting political or philosophical opinions. Government is about running services, designing programs that actually work for the people to address the problem. And in this situation, we can actually measure. We have data. We have facts. So, measure what is happening in society and calibrate your reopening to those measurements, right?
So, we're adopting a set of rules, a set of guidelines. We have studied reopening plans, all around the country. We have spoken to every expert on the globe who has been through this before, and we have come up with factual data points to guide us on reopening. First point, don't overwhelm the hospital system. If the hospital system in an area exceeds 70% capacity, which means you only have 30% left, or if the transmission rate hits 1.1, those are danger signs. We know that. Remember, hospital capacity. If you're at 70% on your hospitals, there is a two week lag on this virus, so if you ever hit 70% you can expect the number to go up for the next two weeks as people who just got infected actually get ill and some of them come into the hospitals. So, 70% is a safe metric to use for your hospital capacity. If your transmission rate hits 1.1, that's what they call outbreak. That means it is going to spread much, much faster. You wouldn't start reopening unless you had a transmission rate below 1.1, really below 1. But if it hits 1.1, that means that you're in trouble.
So, those are two main data points. If you look at the state, and this state is different than most states, this state has New York City, one of the most dense urban areas on the globe, and then we have Upstate New York. And if you look at our infection rate Upstate New York, it is very different than the downstate New York. And if you look at the rate Upstate New York, it is comparable to many states in the Midwest and the West. We hear the discussion every day, "Well, some states are reopening because that's don't have that bad of a problem." Some of the places in Upstate have a problem that is comparable to states in the Midwest or the West. Much, much different than New York City.
Okay, then let's come up with data points, factual points of what we have to do to reopen. So, everyone has the same opening template that we're dealing with. And we have to be smart about this. Again, I know it is emotion, and I know that people are feeling emotional. But emotions can't drive a reopening process. We're talking about infection rate and hospital capacity. Separate the emotion from the logic. And we have to act as our logical selves here. And that's what smart means. Be smart about it - don't be emotional and don't be political. Don't get pushed politically into a situation. "Protesters are in front of the capitol, we better reopen." No. I'm not going do that. That's not how we make decisions.
The first point is - CDC set guidelines as to reopening for states. We think those CDC guidelines make sense. You have to have a 14-day decline in the number of hospitalizations before you go forward. Second, identify industries that you can start reopening that will bring people back to work, get the economy going, but, you know that you can do the appropriate precautions and social distancing. So, in phase one, we're talking about the construction and manufacturing industry. Those are two industries that employ a lot of people, but we believe you can put the right precautions in place and learn the lesson from where we have been. And, say to those businesses, this is not just about government, but say to the business, "Tell us how you are going to incorporate the lessons that we just learned. How do you incorporate social distancing? How do you incorporate fewer people in this space you so reduce density? How do you have the right PPE? How are you going to monitor? Are you going to take temperatures of everyone who walks in?" That's for businesses to decide also.
Separate point: make sure that you don't have what we call, "attractive nuisances," not really the right use of the term. Attractive nuisance is a legal term. But, an attractive nuisance in this context - you open up a facility, or an attraction that could bring people from outside the region to you. You have all of this pent-up demand in the whole tri-state region. Make sure that don't open up something that's going to bring hundreds of people from the outside in. What business precautions will those individual businesses take? Watch the healthcare capacity. Your healthcare system cannot go over 70 percent capacity. Again, there is a two-week lag. If you're at 70 percent, bells should go off. Don't go over 70 percent in your ICU beds. Many of the people who come in with COVID, need an ICU bed because it is respiratory illness. As a matter of fact, almost at the heat of this, almost every bed in a hospital turned into an ICU bed. That's why we needed the ventilators. Because, these people who get seriously ill with COVID need that level of care.
Remember, you have a flu season coming up in the fall. And the number of hospitalizations normally goes up in the flu season. So, anticipate that. Stockpile the equipment. We learned a lot of painful lessons here. One is, you have to have the PPE, you have to have the masks and you have to have the gown. There is an international demand on it. So, make sure we have a stockpile of reserve of the PPE. We have to have testing. How many tests? Dr. Birks recommends 30 per 1,000 people. Different people have different numerical personals. But, I think that we start with that. Do we have enough testing sites? How long does it take to turn around a test? And then are we advertising to people, this is where you go in and this is what you do to get a test, if you think you may be infected. The whole thing with keeping that infection rate down, is find a person early who is infected, let them know it, and then, trace and then isolate. Do we have a tracing system in place? Mayor Bloomberg is helping us to organize this. It has never been done before. Nobody ever heard of tracing to this extent. But, tracing is once a person says that they are positive, you trace their contacts back, you notify people, you test people. That is a whole different operation. The current recommendation is you need at least 30 tracers per 100,000 people. So, we have to have that in place. You have to have isolation facilities in place. Isolation facilities are when someone gets sick, you know that they are positive, and they don't want to go home to quarantine, because, if they go home, they could infect their family, which is what is happening now, a lot of these new cases. So, we have to have a facility where somebody who is positive, could quarantine for the two weeks, without going home. And we have to identify them now.
We have to coordinate regionally, schools, tracing this all has to be coordinated on a multi-county effort. We have to reimagine tele-medicine. Reimagine tele-education. We have to have a regional control room that is monitoring all of these indicators and gives us the danger sign if we get over 70 percent capacity, if the infection rate pops up. We have to have one central source that is monitoring all these dials, that hits the danger button so you could actually slow down the reopening.
And then we have to protect the respect the essential workers which is I'll talk about in a moment. On businesses, they have to have social distancing, continued testing, ongoing monitoring protocols. That's all part of the new normal and businesses are going to have to do that if they want to reopen. They are going to have to adopt the federal and the state guidelines on this issue.
Today we're announcing an advisory board that is made up of statewide business leaders, academic leaders, civic leaders who are advising us on just this and they have been for weeks and I want to thank them very much.
Manufacturing, construction, as the first phase, businesses, that's 46,000 jobs in a place like central New York so its major employer, and these are businesses that can adopt to the new normal in terms of their employees and in terms of the places of business and in terms of the processes that they put in place.
On the healthcare capacity, again, we just lived this. We cannot be in a situation where 70% capacity is exceeded. You need at least that 30% buffer on hospital beds and you need 30% of your ICU beds available if that number starts to tick up.
In terms of testing, we have to have the testing regimen in place and we have to prioritize the people who get tested. Symptomatic people, individuals who came in contact with a symptomatic person, and front line and essential workers. They do have a higher right infection because they are putting themselves in harm's way and we want to make sure that they have the testing so we have an early alert system.
You have to have the right number of sites. Testing won't work if it is impossible to get. Testing won't work if it is too hard to get. So you have to have the right number of sites for the area that you're dealing with. The advertising is very important. It has to be available but people have to know it is available and they have to know what the symptoms are that would have them go get tested because, again, this is about people understanding it and people buying into it. This is not government orders. This is people get it. They know the facts, they know what they are supposed to do and these do it because they have been, we've communicated successfully the circumstances and the facts. But you need that testing and you need it to trace the contacts. Otherwise, you see that infection rate increase.
On the tracing, the estimate is 30 tracers for every 100,000 people. So that's a data point. That's what it means to have tracing in place. And then isolation facilities is a proportionate number of people who test positive, who say, I can't go home or I don't want to go home. I don't want to infect my family. I don't want to infect my significant other. I have enough issues without having to explain how I infected my significant other with COVID, which is a valid point. So, isolation facilities are available for those people.
And then the regional control room, where you're monitoring all of those metrics, you're monitoring hospital capacity, the rate of infection, the PPE burn rate, how businesses are complying, and it has an emergency switch that we can throw if any one of those indicators are problematic because remember we have gone through hell and back over the past 60 or so days.
What we have done has been tremendous, really tremendous. What people have done, what the American people have done, what New Yorkers have done, has been to save lives, literally. But we have to remain vigilant. This is not over. I know as much as we want it to be over, it is not over and we have to respect what we accomplished here.
When they started this the projections for this state were 120,000 New Yorkers would be infected and hospitalized. Only 20,000 were infected and hospitalized. How could they be so wrong? They were not wrong. We changed reality. The differential, the variance, is what we did. It is close down. It is wearing masks. It is all of that. We reduced the rate. We so-called flattened the curve. That meant 100,000 fewer New Yorkers didn't get seriously ill, didn't go into a hospital, didn't overwhelm the hospital system. And a percentage of those people who got seriously ill would have passed away. So we literally saved lives.
We can't now negate everything that we accomplished. We have to do the opposite. We have to take this experience and we have to learn and grow from the experience. And we have to build back better than before. As a society and as a community we need better systems. This exposed a lot of issues, fundamental issues. We have to do a better job on tele-education. Remote learning, sounds great but you have to have all of the equipment, people have to be trained and teachers have to be trained. We jumped into it. We have to do a better job. We have to do a better job on telemedicine. Not everybody has to show up at the doctor's office. You can do a better job. We have to do a better job on our basic public health system. I mean when you look back the virus was in China last November and December. Last November and December. Why didn't someone suspect, well maybe the virus gets on plane last November, December and lands in the United States the next day, right. Everybody talks about global interconnection and how fast. Everybody knows, there is a virus in China. Last November, December, China says don't worry we're taking care of it. Yeah, but all you need is one person to get on a plane. As it happened, one person got on plane and went from China to Europe and then it went from Europe to New York. The flights from China basically go to the West Coast. The flights from Europe basically go to the East Coast. We got it through Europe.
But, where was the whole international health community? Where was the whole national host of experts, the WHO, the NIH, the CDC? That whole alphabet soup of agencies. Where was everyone? Where was the intelligence community with the briefings? Saying this is in China and they have something called an airplane and you can get on an airplane and you can come to the United States. Governors don't do global pandemics, right. But, there is a whole international, national health community that would do that. Where are all of the experts? Where was the New York Times? Where was the Wall Street Journal? Where was all of the bugle blowers who should say, be careful, there is a virus in China that may be in the United States. That was November and December. We're sitting here, January, February, still debating how serious this is.
And again, it's not a state responsibility. But, in this system, who was supposed to blow the bugle and didn't? Because, I would bank that this happens again, and is the same thing going to happen again? I hope not. So, we have to figure these things out.
We also have to remember that as a society and as a community, we're about government and we're about systems. But even more, we're about values. What makes us who we are, are our values. And that's my last point which is, point number 12, protect and respect the essential workers. I had two nightmares when this started. One, that I would put out directives on what we need to do and 19 million New Yorkers would say, "I haven't been convinced, I'm not going to do this." Because look at what the directives were. We're going to close down every business. You have to stay in your home. I mean, the most disruptive government policies put in place. I can't even remember the last time, I can't even see in the in the history books the last time that government was more disruptive to individual life. No businesses, everybody stays home. No schools. What happens if New Yorkers said, "We're not doing that? We're not doing that. It's too much. It is an overreaction, it's political." Everything is political nowadays, right? So easy to say, well, that's just political. That was a fear, because if New Yorkers did that, governmentally had no ability to enforce 19 million people staying in their homes. That's why the communication was so important. Give them the facts, give them the facts, give them the facts so they understand why. That worked.
Second nightmare was, what if essential workers don't show up? You have to have food. You have to have transportation. The lights have to be on. Someone has to pick up the garbage. The hospitals have to run. What if the essential workers said, "I'm not showing up." You communicated so effectively, the fear of the virus, that the essential workers say, "If everybody is staying home, I'm staying home too." It could've happened. I went through the HIV virus when HIV started. People we petrified. Nobody knew what it was. Nobody knew how it lived. How it was transferred. How long it lived. People were petrified. Nobody wanted to go near it. What happens if the essential workers here said, "I'm not going to show up to run the bus. You don't pay me enough to put my life in danger. I'm not doing it." They showed up. They showed up. I just finished communicating how dangerous this was to convince 19 million people stay home and close schools and close businesses. And the essential workers still showed up. That is a value. They did not show up for a paycheck. They didn't show up because government asked them to show up. They didn't show up because their employer said, "I need you to show up." They showed up, out of their values and out of their honor and out of their dignity. That's why they showed up.
My grandfather, people know my father in this state, my grandfather little Italian immigrant, Andrea Cuomo, named for him. No education, ditch digger, came here the classic immigrant story. Winds up having a little grocery store in South Jamaica, Queens, poor community. And during the depression he almost lost the store and he loved to tell this story. Why did he almost lose the store? Well, it was the depression, and the finances. No. Because, he gave away food during the depression. Because, he wouldn't let anyone be hungry. So, a family would come in, nobody had money it was the depression and he would give them food. He was giving away so much food that he had problems paying his bills. Gave him a lot of stress, wound up having a heart attack as a young person. But, no one told him to do that. That was just his values. And I would ask him about it afterward. I said, Grandpa, why would you do? He said, what am I going to do, do let them go hungry? I'm going to let somebody go hungry? That was unimaginable to him. He was an essential worker. Nobody calmed him an essential worker but he was an essential worker.
And, that's what people are doing day in and day out here. The person who delivers the groceries, the person who's driving the bus, the person who's driving the subway, the nurses, the doctors, the orderlies. All of these people who are showing up every day. Not because of the check, they could stay home too and file for unemployment. No, they're doing it out of their sense of honor and their sense of dignity and their sense of pride, this is their mission, this is their role, they're New Yorkers, they're Americans, and they're going to show up.
The police officers, the firefighters. I mean, everyone's petrified. You're going to be a police officer, you're going to pull people over in a car? You're going to go into a house for a domestic disturbance, wrestle with somebody in the house, you don't know who it is? That's what they do. That's their job. That's why I wanted to thank the healthcare workers and everybody thanks the healthcare workers, but it's not just the healthcare workers. It's all the people who've been out there all this time making sure that everyone else could stay home. They have higher infection rates. They're getting paid a minimal amount of money. They have families at home too that are suffering, but they're getting up every day and they're doing their job. So as we talk about reopening, protect and respect the essential workers. They need testing. They need equipment. They're putting their lives on the line. Protect and respect the essential workers.
Public transportation we've kept running because they need it to get to work. That's why public transportation continued. We talked early on about closing public transportation. They said forget it. That's how the nurses are getting to work, that's how the orderlies are getting to work. Nobody will be in a hospital, nobody will be there to deliver the food, nobody will be in the power plant to keep the lights on, nobody will be at the telecommunications department. Public transportation is vital for them. Well, then make sure public transportation is safe, and disinfected. The New York Daily News ran a story today on the public transportation in New York City. And the front page is a picture of a subway car filled with homeless people and their belongings. Respect the essential workers. That is disgusting what is happening on those subway cars. It's disrespectful to the essential workers who need to ride the subway system. Upstate New York, need to ride the buses to get to work. They deserve better and they will have better. We have to have a public transportation system that is clean, where the trains are disinfected. You have homeless people on trains, it's not even safe for the homeless people to be on trains. No face masks, you have this whole outbreak, we're concerned about homeless people, so we let them stay on the trains without protection in this epidemic of the COVID virus? No. We have to do better than that, and we will.
And we will learn from this and we'll be better from this because, we are New York tough. And tough means not just tough, because tough is easy. It's smart, and it's disciplined, and it's unified, and it's loving. And that's who we are, and that's what we are, and that's why we got through this as well as we have thus far together. Because of our values, because of our respect, our dignity, our mutuality, our love for one another, our willingness to sacrifice, and because, we're fortunate where we have many, many heroes in our midst, not because they have medals on their uniforms, but because they have honor in their souls and they have strength in their character, and they have dignity and pride in themselves, and because they show up every day, every day, to make sure that everyone is protected. And, they have to be at the top of the list. They're going to be at the top of the list in the next iteration of whatever this is. They're going be at the top of the list at the golden gate. But, they deserve our respect and protection here, and they're going to get it.
New York State is Now Conducting Average of 30,000 Diagnostic Tests Per Day
Results of FDNY and NYPD Antibody Testing Study Show 17.1 Percent of FDNY and 10.5 Percent of NYPD Have Antibodies
State is Expanding Antibody Testing Today for 1,000 Transit Workers
Directs MTA to Issue Full Plan by Tomorrow on How to Clean and Disinfect Every Train, Every Night
Confirms 4,585 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 299,691; New Cases in 46 Counties
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced 35 counties have been approved to resume elective outpatient treatments. 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. The counties now eligible are: Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chenango, Delaware, Dutchess, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Genesee, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Livingston, Madison, Monroe, Niagara, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Orleans, Oswego, Putnam, Saratoga, Schoharie, Schuyler, St. Lawrence, Steuben, Sullivan, Tompkins, Ulster, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates.
Governor Cuomo also announced New York State is now conducting an average of 30,000 diagnostic tests for COVID-19 per day. Last week, the Governor announced the state will work with the federal government to double New York's testing capacity from 20,000 tests per day to 40,000 tests per day over several weeks.
The Governor also announced the results of the state's FDNY and NYPD antibody testing survey that tested 1,000 New York City Fire Department officers and 1,000 New York City Police Department officers from across all five boroughs. The preliminary results show 17.1 percent of FDNY officers and EMTs have COVID-19 antibodies and 10.5 percent of NYPD officers have COVID-19 antibodies. The state will be conducting further antibody analysis and surveys by race and gender in the future.
The Governor also announced the state is testing today 1,000 transit workers for antibodies to further determine the spread of infections among our frontline workers. The State is working with BioReference to provide antibody tests to first responders and other essential workers from the MTA, State Police, DOCCS and others.
We know testing is key to re-opening New York - it is the indicator that will show if we are keeping the infection rate down throughout the re-opening process.
Governor Cuomo
The Governor also directed the MTA to issue a full plan by tomorrow, April 30th, on how it will clean and disinfect every train, every night in response to reported deteriorations of the conditions in the subways during the pandemic.
"We have made tremendous progress to stop the spread of this infection, but we are not out of the woods yet and we need to proceed with caution as we begin our re-opening plan," Governor Cuomo said. "We know testing is key to re-opening New York - it is the indicator that will show if we are keeping the infection rate down throughout the re-opening process. We have been more aggressive than any state or nation in the world on testing and we are now halfway to our goal of doubling our testing capacity from 20,000 per day to 40,000 per day, but we still have more work to do."
Finally, the Governor confirmed 4,585 additional cases of novel coronavirus, bringing the statewide total to 299,691 confirmed cases in New York State. Of the 299,691 total individuals who tested positive for the virus, the geographic breakdown is as follows:
Results of FDNY and NYPD Antibody Testing Study Show 17.1 Percent of FDNY and 10.5 Percent of NYPD Have Antibodies
State is Expanding Antibody Testing Today for 1,000 Transit Workers
Directs MTA to Issue Full Plan by Tomorrow on How to Clean and Disinfect Every Train, Every Night
Confirms 4,585 Additional Coronavirus Cases in New York State - Bringing Statewide Total to 299,691; New Cases in 46 Counties
Governor Cuomo: "Our reopening is different. We don't have a conceptual plan. We don't have an abstract plan because there is no conceptual plan, there is no abstract plan. You have to have a plan that is based on facts, based on specifics. This is not about politics, this is not about spin, this is not about emotion. There are no conspiracy theories at work here. We outlined a 12-step plan that is factual, that is based on numbers, based on data and then it has a numerical circuit breaker that is not subject to personal emotion or desire, but just checks and monitors that infection rate that we just saw in Germany and is watching for those increases."
Cuomo: "We received thousands of masks from all across America, unsolicited, in the mail, homemade, creative, personal, with beautiful notes from all across the country, literally. Just saying, thinking about you, "We care, we love you, we want to help." And this is just people's way of saying we care. And we want to help. This is what this country is about. And this is what Americans are about. A little bit more of this and a little bit less of the partisanship and the ugliness, and this country will be a better place."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced 35 counties have been approved to resume elective outpatient treatments. 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. The counties now eligible are: Allegany, Broome, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chenango, Delaware, Dutchess, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Genesee, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Livingston, Madison, Monroe, Niagara, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Orleans, Oswego, Putnam, Saratoga, Schoharie, Schuyler, St. Lawrence, Steuben, Sullivan, Tompkins, Ulster, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates.
Governor Cuomo also announced New York State is now conducting an average of 30,000 diagnostic tests for COVID-19 per day. Last week, the Governor announced the state will work with the federal government to double New York's testing capacity from 20,000 tests per day to 40,000 tests per day over several weeks.
The Governor also announced the results of the state's FDNY and NYPD antibody testing survey that tested 1,000 New York City Fire Department officers and 1,000 New York City Police Department officers from across all five boroughs. The preliminary results show 17.1 percent of FDNY officers and EMTs have COVID-19 antibodies and 10.5 percent of NYPD officers have COVID-19 antibodies. The state will be conducting further antibody analysis and surveys by race and gender in the future.
The Governor also announced the state is testing today 1,000 transit workers for antibodies to further determine the spread of infections among our frontline workers. The State is working with BioReference to provide antibody tests to first responders and other essential workers from the MTA, State Police, DOCCS and others.
The Governor also directed the MTA to issue a full plan by tomorrow, April 30th, on how it will clean and disinfect every train, every night in response to reported deteriorations of the conditions in the subways during the pandemic.
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. Members of the esteemed Legislative Correspondents Association. Thank you very much for being here. Everybody knows Joe Friday. My daughters tell me that nobody knows him, and nobody knows what I'm talking about, but that's okay because what he would say is just the facts, ma'am, just the facts, ma'am, very droll, dry. Because people want to give their editorial comments, well I think this, I think this, no, no, no. Well let's just start with the facts, ma'am. Joe Friday. Get to know him.
Hospitalization rate ticks down, good news. Net change, down, that's good news. Intubations down, that's good news. COVID hospitalizations, new ones per day, just about flat, that's not great news. Actually up a tick. So that is not good news. What we're watching now is how fast the decline, how low does it go? We don't want to see 1,000 new cases every day. We'd like to see that in the low hundreds, ideally, of new cases every day. Death rate, terrible news. 330. You see the decline has been slow at best and still disgustingly high. So we're making progress, that's for sure, but we're not out of the woods yet. And we're proceeding with caution.
And there are caution signs out there that we should pay attention to. Singapore is talking about a second wave with 900 new cases. This is after they controlled the beast, they're on the decline. They're now looking at new cases. Germany is a situation that we should also watch and learn f from. They relaxed and started to reopen. they're now seeing an increase. These are interesting, the rate of infection, which is what we watch, was at .7. One person infecting .7 percent, obviously less than one person. 1 percent infection rate is one person infecting one person. They were at .7. They started to reopen. In 10 days they went up to a one on the infection rate. That's troubling. Shows you how fast the infection rate can increase if you don't do it right on the reopening. So proceed with caution.
Our reopening is different. We don't have a conceptual plan. We don't have an abstract plan because there is no conceptual plan, there is no abstract plan. You have to have a plan that is based on facts, based on specifics. This is not about politics, this is not about spin, this is not about emotion. There are no conspiracy theories at work here. We outlined a 12-step plan that is factual, that is based on numbers, based on data and then it has a numerical circuit breaker that is not subject to personal emotion or desire, but just checks and monitors that infection rate that we just saw in Germany and is watching for those increases. And if there's an increase, circuit breaker stops the reopening at that point. Some of the specifics we're looking at, you must have 30 percent of your hospital beds available.
We can't go back to where we were where we overwhelmed the hospital system. We have to have a 30 percent buffer. We have to have 30 percent of ICU beds. We have to have that buffer before we start bumping up against total capacity, and we have to watch the hospitalization rate and the diagnostic testing rate, how many are positive, how many are negative, which we'll take on a continuous basis. You see that number start going up, worry. But it's all based on the data and the numbers. I'm sorry, and the rate of transmission, RT, rate of transmission, our road and track, rate of transmission has to be 1.1 or less. We just said Germany is at .1. The 1.1, that is textbook outbreak. So watch the numbers and watch the transmission rate.
How do you do that? You do that with testing and that's why everybody is talking about testing. The testing allows you to continually test sample how many people are positive, how many people are negative. You see the positive start to increase through your day-to-day testing. That is a pause sign. We're doing about 20,000 tests. We said we wanted to double that. We're now on average about 30,000 tests per day which is a dramatic increase, not where we need to be, but a dramatic increase.
Where we are now, you should know, is New York State is doing more than most countries are doing so we have been very aggressive in testing and we have made great progress. New Yorkers should feel good about that but we have more to do.
On elective surgeries, we had canceled all elective surgeries so we could have increased capacity in the hospitals. When you cancel elective surgeries hospitals feel a financial pinch because that's where they make their money is on elective surgeries. So for areas that don't have a fear of a COVID surge, we're going to allow elective surgeries to begin. That's primarily in counties upstate. Again, counties where we're still worried about a surge in the COVID beds, we're not going to open it up to elective surgery until we know we're out of the woods on the COVID virus. This is a list of counties that are eligible now for elective surgeries. I'll do an Executive Order on that today.
We've been worried about front line workers because they are the heroes who are out there every day so everybody else can stay home. Somebody asked me yesterday on a radio interview, well, you're out there every day. Are you taking care of yourself? I'm out there every day. Forget me. I'll tell you who is out there every day. The nurses who are in the emergency room, the doctors in the emergency room, the police officer who is going into homes and apartments because there's a domestic disturbance, the EMTs, the Fire Department, the delivery worker who goes to 50 doors a day and gets paid. Those people are out there every day. They're the ones who are really doing the work. Compared to them, what I do is de minimis. They're doing it not because they get paid a lot of money, not because people say thank you, God bless you. They're doing it because it's their value, their honor, their pride, their dignity, and they show up. Even when it's hard, they show up. My hat is off to them.
I want to make sure we do what we need to do to protect them, that they have the equipment, they have the PPE, they have our respect, they have our gratitude. I also want to make sure we're testing so we get them the results of tests so they can be taking care of themselves.
I also want to see if we have a significant problem in any of those front line workforces. So we're doing testing. We started with the New York City Fire Department and New York City Police Department. What we found so far, the Fire Department which also has the EMTs, tested 17% positive, NYPD 10% positive. Number much higher in the FDNY, EMTs. We believe that's because the EMT number is driving it up, but we have to do more numbers and more research to determine that. Remember, the EMTSs, they are the front line. They're the ones who are there assisting the person in the closest contact in many ways. FDNY, also. But we want to find out exactly what's going on. They compare to a downstate average of the general population of about 18%. Again, we'll do further research, further surveys to look at it by race and gender, also.
We're also going to do the same thing with the transit workers, the people who drive the buses, the subways, who clean the buses and the subways. Without those buses and subways, the essential workers couldn't get to work. Why didn't we just close down subways and buses? Because you close down the subways and the buses in New York City, don't expect the nurses and the doctors to be able to get to the hospital. Don't expect the delivery worker to be able to deliver food when you ring on your telephone. We need that public transportation to transport the essential workers. Those front line workers are at risk, so we're going to do additional testing for the transport workers.
I also commented yesterday, the Daily News had pictures of things that are going on in the New York City subway system, where the cars were filthy, they were disgusting. Homeless people were there with all their belongings and it was not just a Daily News picture, it reflected what has been in the press and what people have been saying, which is the deterioration of the conditions in the subways. Some crimes are up in the subways, even though ridership is down 90 percent. I don't even know how mathematically that is possible. The trains are filled with homeless people. You're not doing the homeless any favor. I've worked with the homeless all my life. To let homeless people stay on the trains in the middle of a global health pandemic with no masks, no protective equipment, you're not helping the homeless.
Letting them endanger their own life and endanger the lives of others is not helping anyone. I told the MTA yesterday, in two days, which means tomorrow, I want a full plan. How do we disinfect every train every night, period. Any essential worker who shows up and gets on a train should know that that train was disinfected the night before. We want them to show up. We don't want them to stay home. We owe it to them to be able to say, the train you ride, the bus you ride has been disinfected and is clean.
Also, state and local funding from Washington is essential. This is now turning into a political brawl on state and local funding. More and more, some of the elected officials in Washington are saying they're against it. They're lead by Senator Mitch McConnell, who leads the Senate, who makes it blatantly political. No blue state bailout. No blue state bailout. What is he trying to say? The states that have coronavirus are Democratic states and he's a Republican, so he doesn't want to help the Democratic states.
He went so far as to say, well he'd be in favor of the states going bankrupt. First, states have never gone bankrupt. States can't go bankrupt. There are serious Constitutional questions about whether or not a state can declare bankruptcy and you need a federal law that would allow the states to declare bankruptcy even if you got around the Constitutional question on bankruptcy. If he believes that, if it wasn't just political rhetoric and personal vitriol, then pass a law that allows states to declare bankruptcy. He would have to do that. I dare him to do that and get that bill signed by the President.
To make it partisan is what is most disturbing and you can see they're now rallying the partisan troops. Senator Scott from Florida says we're supposed to bail them out. We versus them. We're supposed to bail them out. It's we and it's them. That's not right. Who is we and who is them? Who is we? And who is them? Them, the people who had coronavirus. They are the ones who had the coronavirus. We, without the virus, are supposed to bail out those people who have the virus. what an ugly sentiment. First of all, on the facts, it's not even close to right and why they would even want to go down this road when the facts damn everything they're saying. And there are still facts. I know it's hard to communicate facts in this environment. I know a lot of the filters don't communicate facts. They all communicate spin now. Everybody has their own spin. But there are still facts that are not political theater, right? New York State bails them out every year. They're not bailing us out. We bail them out every year. New York State pays $29 billion into that federal pot, $29 billion more every year that we never get back. Our state contribution into the federal pot, the United States of America pot, every year we put in $29 billion more than we take out. On the other hand, they take out every year $37 billion more than they pay to the federal government. Senator Mitch McConnell, you are bailing out New York, when every year you take out more from the kitty, the federal pot, $37 billion more than you put in? Who is bailing out whom?
Senator Scott, Florida, you're going to bail us out? You take out $30 billion more every year than you pay in. How dare they? How dare they when those are the facts? How long are you going to play the American people and assume they're stupid? They are not and they can add and they know facts. And I don't care what the news media tries to do to distort these facts. They are numbers, and they are facts, and they can't be distorted, and this is every year.
Look, what this is really about, it's the Washington double speak. You look at the bills that they want to pass and who they want to help. They want to fund the hotels, the restaurants, the airlines, the big corporations. That's who they want to fund. Who do state and local governments fund? State and local governments fund police, firefighters, nurses, school teachers, food banks. That's who I want to fund and that's what it means to fund a state and local government. And that's the choice they're making. Everybody applauds the health care workers. Jets fly over in tribute to the health care workers. That's all nice. Saying thank you is nice. How about actually rewarding them and making their life easier? How about giving them hazard pay? How about helping with their childcare? How about helping families who can't feed their kids right now? How about helping the police, and helping the firefighters, and all the people who are out there right now killing themselves to make life easier for us?
That's what this is really about. They want to fund corporate America. That's who puts money in their pockets. And I say let's fund working Americans. That's the choice. Bail out us, them. No, it's just theater. It's just smoke and mirrors to avoid the American people seeing the reality, which is whose pocket they want to put money in, versus whose pocket state and local governments want to fund. The reason that it's so disturbing to me, I'm not surprised by anything in politics. I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly for many, many years. I was in Washington for eight years. I know what it's like. But if there was ever a time that one could reasonably believe you could put aside partisan politics. If there was ever going to be a moment where we could say, you know what, let's stop just for one moment the partisanship, the ugliness, the anger, the deception. Let's just stop for one moment. If there was going to be one moment to hit the pause button, the moment would be now. You have human suffering. You have people dying. You can't stop the politics even in this moment? Even in this moment when people are dying all across the country, you still want to play your politics? That's what this is about, and that's why it is so disturbing on a fundamental level. Politics, I'm getting up and I'm reading that death toll number. I'm speaking to the widows and the brothers and the sisters and the children of people who died, and then we're going to play politics with funding that's necessary to save people's lives? When does it stop?
And the disconnect is between the political leadership and the people, because the American people, it's not them. They are principled, they are kind, they are better than what they are getting. The American instinct is to help each other in crisis. The American instinct is to be good neighbors. The American instinct is the farmer who sent me the one mask to help a New Yorker when he only had five masks and a wife with one lung and underlying illness. And he sends one of his five masks to New York. Think about that generosity, that charity, that spirit. That's America. Why? Because we're good neighbors, because we care about one another.
America was when I said we need help in our emergency rooms and hospitals and 95,000 nurses and doctors from across the nation said we will come to New York to help. We'll come into the emergency room. We'll come into the hospital. I understand it's COVID I will leave my family, and I will come to help yours. That's America. That's who we are and that's who we have shown ourselves to be in the middle of this crisis. The crisis brings out the best and the worst, yes. And the best of America is beautiful and that's what we've seen. Because, yes, we are tough. Yes, we are smart. Yes, we are disciplined. Yes, we are united. Yes, we're loving, loving, because we are Americans. And that's who we are and how we are as Americans. And I just hope the political leadership of this nation understands how good we are as a people.
And the textbook says politicians lead, elected officials lead. No, sometimes the people lead and the politicians follow, and that's where we are today. Follow the American people. Look at what they're doing. Look at how they're reacting. And politicians, try to be half as good as the American people. I want to show you a self-portrait that was done by American people. This is a self-portrait of America, okay? That's a self-portrait of America. You know what it spells? It spells love. That's what it spells. You have to look carefully, but that's what the American people are saying. We received thousands of masks from all across America, unsolicited, in the mail, homemade, creative, personal, with beautiful notes from all across the country, literally. Just saying, thinking about you, "We care, we love you, we want to help." And this is just people's way of saying we care. And we want to help. This is what this country is about. And this is what Americans are about. A little bit more of this and a little bit less of the partisanship and the ugliness, and this country will be a better place. Thank you. Thank you, guys.
April 29, 2020.
Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa Issues Report to Governor Cuomo Outlining the COVID-19 Maternity Task Force's Initial Recommendations https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/secretary-governor-melissa-derosa-issues-report-governor-cuomo-outlining-covid-19-maternity
Governor Accepts Task Force Recommendations in Full
Recommendations Include Measures to Diversify Birthing Site Options and Support Patient Choice; Extend Period of Time a Healthy Support Person Can Accompany a Mother Post Delivery; Mandates Testing of all Pregnant New Yorkers; Ensures Equity in Birthing Options; Creates of an Educational Campaign; and Reviews of the Impact of COVID-19 on Pregnancy and Newborns with Special Emphasis on Reducing Racial Disparities in Maternal Mortality
Based on Task Force Recommendations, Governor Issues Executive Order Allowing for Immediate Establishment of Additional Birthing Surge Sites
Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa today issued a report to Governor Cuomo outlining the COVID-19 Maternity Task Force's initial recommendations. Governor Cuomo has accepted these recommendations in full. The recommendations include measures to diversify birthing site options and support patient choice; extend the period of time a healthy support person can accompany a mother post delivery; mandate testing of all pregnant New Yorkers; ensure equity in birthing options; create an educational campaign; and review the impact of COVID-19 on pregnancy and newborns with special emphasis on reducing racial disparities in maternal mortality. The task force's full report is available here.
"In the midst of this pandemic many women are struggling with additional stress and anxiety caused by the uncertainty of this virus and how it might affect their pregnancy or birthing plan," Governor Cuomo said. "I'm grateful to the task force for their quick work, and I am accepting all their recommendations which will help tackle the problems that so many women are facing and ensure safer, healthier pregnancies for all."
"COVID-19 has caused enormous stress for women and expecting parents who are preparing to bring a child into this world in the midst of this global pandemic," Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor and Chair of the New York State Council on Women and Girls, said. "I am proud that during these uncertain times, New York is leading the way in ensuring laboring mothers are properly supported and safely cared for. The policies being advanced today will be implemented immediately to address the very valid fears and concerns that so many women are now facing, and to address issues that impact pregnancy and infants."
Recommendation One: Diversify Birthing Site Options to Support Patient Choice
The Task Force members recommend that Governor Cuomo issue an Executive Order to allow for the immediate establishment of additional birthing surge sites operated by currently established licensed birthing hospitals and centers.
The Task Force also recommends that the New York State Department of Health be directed to develop a streamlined process to accept applications from licensed health care facilities, such as community health centers and federally qualified health centers, to convert unused space in their facility to dedicated labor and delivery spaces during an emergency. The Task Force also recommends that the State limit emergency birthing centers to licensed facilities.
Further, to increase access to midwifery services, the Task Force recommends DOH move to expedite, within the next 45 days, the finalization of the licensure process for the establishment of midwifery led birthing centers in New York State to ensure there are sufficient birthing facilities available to meet community need during emergency situations.
Recommendation Two: Extend Period of Time a Healthy Support Person Can Accompany a Mother Post Delivery The Task Force recommends that Governor Cuomo update the Executive Order 202.13, authorizing at least one support person to accompany a pregnant individual for the duration of their stay in any hospital, birthing facility or postpartum unit, as medically appropriate. This order must clarify that "duration of stay" includes labor, delivery and the postpartum period, including recovery. This order should also clarify that doulas are considered an essential part of the support care team and should be allowed to accompany a pregnant individual during labor and delivery as an additional support person, as medically appropriate. Exceptions should be made only in limited circumstances and based on clinical guidance, such as availability of PPE.
Recommendation Three: Mandate Testing of All Pregnant New Yorkers The Task Force recommends universal COVID-19 testing for all pregnant individuals and for all support persons accompanying pregnant individuals at birthing facilities, as testing becomes available.
The Task Force also recommends that DOH issue guidance for COVID-19 testing that defines pregnant individuals as a priority population for testing and states that pregnant individuals be tested during pregnancy and one week prior to their estimated due date or upon admission if the second test is not conducted one week prior to delivery.
The Task Force also recommends that DOH monitor the availability of testing supplies to support equitable access to testing kits and laboratory analysis for all pregnant individuals in all birthing settings.
Recommendation Four: Ensure Equity in Birthing Options
The Task Force recommends work groups charged with developing standards, policies and/or regulations related to birthing options develop include participation from community members.
The Task Force also advises that DOH identify and engage community members and representatives from maternal child health serving community-based organizations to join a NYS COVID-19 Maternity Task Force working group charged with the development of a messaging and education campaign aimed at those most impacted by racial/ethnic, economic or other disparate outcomes.
Recommendation Five: Educational Campaign
The Task Force recommends that DOH engage subject matter experts, community members and representatives from community-based organizations serving maternal and child health populations to create an educational campaign on behalf of the COVID-19 Maternity Task Force. This campaign would be designed to:
Emphasize the safety of and rebuild confidence in maternity care at all certified birthing facilities;
Explain infection control practices in each type of birthing facility; and
Increase patient understanding of different levels of maternity care and types of birthing facilities as well as how to work with your provider to select the appropriate patient- centered delivery.
Recommendation Six: Reviews of the Impact of COVID-19 on Pregnancy and Newborns with Special Emphasis on Reducing Racial Disparities in Maternal Mortality
The Task Force recommends that DOH work with the University at Albany School of Public Health Maternal & Child Health Program to conduct a review of the impact of COVID-19 on pregnancy and discuss a summary of its findings with the Task Force and the Regional Perinatal Centers.
DOH will host weekly statewide interactive webinars addressing the management of maternity care during the pandemic as needed as part a collaboration with the New York State Perinatal Quality Collaborative in partnership with American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology District II. DOH will also host a webinar on obstetrical care and implicit bias within the context of the COVID-19. DOH will also collaborate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a COVID-19 Pregnancy Module that will capture supplemental data on COVID-19 during pregnancy.
This module will help describe risk for severe illness or adverse outcomes among pregnant individuals with laboratory evidence of COVID-19 infection up to delivery, and their newborns, to inform public health guidance and risk communication messages.
The Department and American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology District II will issue guidance on best practices, including prenatal care, during the time of COVID, with a special emphasis on reducing racial disparities.
About the New York State COVID-19 Maternity Task Force
In April 2018, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced a multi-faceted initiative to combat maternal mortality and racial disparate outcomes in New York State. Continuing New York State's commitment to improve maternal and child outcomes and recognizing the significant strain the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on hospital infrastructure and the concerns of many pregnant individuals across New York State, Governor Cuomo directed the NYS Council on Women and Girls, with the support of the New York State Department of Health, to convene an expert task force to address the impact of COVID-19 on maternity. Chaired by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa, the Task Force was charged with examining the best approach to provide mothers a safe alternative, when appropriate, to already stressed hospitals amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Comprised of a multi-disciplinary group of maternal and infant health professionals from across New York State, the Task Force met remotely to discuss these issues and propose recommendations. Given the urgency of the COVID-19 emergency and its impact on pregnant people, meetings of the Task Force were held within a week in order to make an initial set of recommendations. Recommendations were compiled and analyzed by DOH staff and shared with Task Force members, who reviewed the submissions and made a collective determination to advance the recommendations outlined below.
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to unfold, the Task Force will stay in place and consider additional ways to address issues that impact pregnancy and infants, starting with review of relevant literature conducted by DOH and University at Albany School of Public Health's Maternal & Child Health Program.
Prior to the creation of the Task Force, New York State took several steps to expand access to access to maternal care during the COVID-19 pandemic, including:
Expanding access to telehealth and telephonic visits;
Expanding access to midwives to ensure sufficient personnel are available to provide maternity care;
Mandating the presence of a support person throughout the birthing process and recovery;
Authorizing out-of-state obstetrician-gynecologists and midwives from other states to practice in New York to improve surge capacity; and
Identifying sexual and reproductive health services as essential.
Members of the COVID-19 Maternity Task Force include:
Christy Turlington Burns, founder of Every Mother Counts
Christa Christakis, MPP - Executive Director, American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists District II
Loretta Willis, RN, BSN, CCM, CPQH,- Vice President Quality & Research, Healthcare Association of NYS
Lorraine Ryan, Esq - Sr. VP Legal Regulatory & Professional Affairs Greater NY Hospital Association
Rose Duhan, President & CEO, Community Health Care Association of NYS
Helena Grant, CNM Directory of Midwifery Woodhull Hospital
Ngozi Moses, Executive Director Brooklyn Perinatal Network
Nan Strauss, JD - Every Mother Counts
Deborah E. Campbell, MD - Montefiore Medical Center
Whitney Hall, CCE, LM, CLC - President, NYS Association of Birth Centers
Natasha Nurse-Clarke, PhD, RN - Regional Perinatal Center Coordinator, Maimonides
Dr. Dena Goffman, MD - NYP/Columbia
Rev. Diann Holt - Founder/Executive Director Durham's Baby Café
Cynthia Jones, MD, MPH - Mosaic Health Center
April 30, 2020.
Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Contact Tracing Pilot Program Supported by Mayor Mike Bloomberg to Begin in Coming Weeks. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-contact-tracing-pilot-program-support-0
New York's Nation-Leading Program Expected to Have 6,400 to 17,000 Tracers Statewide Depending on Projected Number of Cases
State Health Department Working with Mayor Bloomberg, Johns Hopkins University and Vital Strategies to Build Army of Contact Tracers for Program
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that New York's contact tracing pilot program, with leadership from Mayor Mike Bloomberg, will begin in the coming weeks. This nation-leading tracing program will focus on areas with the highest rates of infection and on regions where data shows could be the first to open. The program will operate through the next flu season, and it will be implemented in coordination with tri-state neighbors New Jersey and Connecticut.
The program will include a baseline of 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 individuals and will utilize additional tracers based on the projected number of cases in each region. The program is expected to have 6,400 to 17,000 tracers statewide depending on the projected number of cases. Contact tracing teams will work remotely with state-of-the-art software to develop a secure database of information on the spread of the infection.
To meet the nation-leading scale and scope of this program, Mayor Bloomberg and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will support the State Department of Health's initiative to build an army of contact tracers through a three-step process: recruitment, interviewing and training. Bloomberg Philanthropies will help DOH to actively identify and recruit potential contact tracers for the program from State, City and County Health Departments.
As part of this effort, The Bloomberg School - the top-rated public health school in the country - in consultation with DOH, will develop a world-class online curriculum for the State's contact tracers that includes a training program and an online exam that must be passed to complete the program. Vital Strategies' initiative Resolve to Save Lives will provide technical and operational advising to New York State Health Department staff.
Tracing is not hard on an individual basis -- the problem is the massive scale and with an operation that has never existed before.
Governor Cuomo
Contact tracing will help prevent the spread of COVID-19 with four key steps. First, labs will report positive cases of COVID-19 immediately to contact tracers on a daily basis. The contact tracer will then interview the positive patient to identify people they may have been in contact with over the past 14 days. The contact tracer will notify and interview each contact to alert them to their risk of infection and instruct those contacts to quarantine or isolate for 14 days to be sure they don't spread COVID-19 to others. The contact tracers will monitor those contacts by text throughout the duration of their quarantine or isolation to see if the contacts are showing any symptoms.
"We know increasing our testing capacity is the key to re-opening New York, and the second step after testing is tracing to find out who tested positive, who they contacted and then isolate those people so you don't increase the rate of infection," Governor Cuomo said. "Tracing is not hard on an individual basis -- the problem is the massive scale and with an operation that has never existed before. We need our contact tracing program to come up to scale to meet what we're doing with testing as soon as possible, and we are working with Mike Bloomberg now to build an army of tracers to meet the state's demand so we can begin this operation immediately."
"One of the most important steps to take to re-open the economy as safely as possible is to create a system of contact tracing. When social distancing is relaxed, contact tracing is our best hope for isolating the virus when it appears - and keeping it isolated," said Michael R. Bloomberg, Founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg LP, three-term mayor of New York City. "Governor Cuomo recognized that, and since Bloomberg Philanthropies has deep experience and expertise in public health, we are glad to support the state in developing and implementing a contact tracing program. And we will share what we learned publicly, so cities and states around the country can build on our efforts, and so can nations around the world."
April 30, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo Announces Contact Tracing Pilot Program Supported by Mayor Mike Bloomberg to Begin in Coming Weeks. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-15
New York's Nation-Leading Program Expected to Have 6,400 to 17,000 Tracers Statewide Depending on Projected Number of Cases
State Health Department Working with Mayor Bloomberg, Johns Hopkins University and Vital Strategies to Build Army of Contact Tracers for Program
Governor Cuomo: "The better you do at reducing the spread of the virus, the fewer people test people test positive, and the fewer you need to trace back. It will require under any estimate, a tracing army to come up to scale very, very quickly. And Mayor Bloomberg has put together a great team who's going to work on this. He has great talent in his Bloomberg Philanthropies, Johns Hopkins University working together with the New York State Department of Health. This is that undertaking and it is massive and that's why bringing in a person with the talent of Mayor Bloomberg and the experience of Mayor Bloomberg to do this is essential."
Cuomo: "We will do this and the Mayor is exactly right. New York, he says as a New Yorker, in many cases we've dealt with challenges first. We figure it out and then we work with other places to actually learn from what we've done. I think this is going to be one of those examples. We want the best system that we can have to get New York open and to protect New Yorkers. But it will also be a laboratory to put together the best system ever put together so we can share that with other governments. And that's what Mayor Bloomberg does so well."
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that New York's contact tracing pilot program, with leadership from Mayor Mike Bloomberg, will begin in the coming weeks. This nation-leading tracing program will focus on areas with the highest rates of infection and on regions where data shows could be the first to open. The program will operate through the next flu season, and it will be implemented in coordination with tri-state neighbors New Jersey and Connecticut.
The program will include a baseline of 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 individuals and will utilize additional tracers based on the projected number of cases in each region. The program is expected to have 6,400 to 17,000 tracers statewide depending on the projected number of cases. Contact tracing teams will work remotely with state-of-the-art software to develop a secure database of information on the spread of the infection.
To meet the nation-leading scale and scope of this program, Mayor Bloomberg and the Johns HopkinsBloomberg School of Public Health will support the State Department of Health's initiative to build an army of contact tracers through a three-step process: recruitment, interviewing and training. Bloomberg Philanthropies will help DOH to actively identify and recruit potential contact tracers for the program from State, City and County Health Departments.
As part of this effort, The Bloomberg School - the top-rated public health school in the country - in consultation with DOH, will develop a world-class online curriculum for the State's contact tracers that includes a training program and an online exam that must be passed to complete the program. Vital Strategies' initiative Resolve to Save Lives will provide technical and operational advising to New York State Health Department staff.
Contact tracing will help prevent the spread of COVID-19 with four key steps. First, labs will report positive cases of COVID-19 immediately to contact tracers on a daily basis. The contact tracer will then interview the positive patient to identify people they may have been in contact with over the past 14 days. The contact tracer will notify and interview each contact to alert them to their risk of infection and instruct those contacts to quarantine or isolate for 14 days to be sure they don't spread COVID-19 to others. The contact tracers will monitor those contacts by text throughout the duration of their quarantine or isolation to see if the contacts are showing any symptoms.
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:
Governor Cuomo: Good morning, we have some new faces with us today. Starting at my far right, Sarah Feinberg, who runs the New York City transit system. To her left, Patrick Foye, Chairman of the MTA. Dr. Zucker, you know, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health. To my left, Melissa DeRosa, Secretary to the Governor. To her left, Robert Mujica, who is the Budget Director of the State of New York and wears second hat today because he is also a member of the MTA board. He doesn't really wear a second hat. That was metaphorical.
What day is today? When I was at Housing and Urban Development, I would sometimes say in a staff meeting, what day is today? What is the date? And I worked with a great fellow who was a Catholic priest, Father Joseph Hacala. And he would say today is another day to do better, with his warm smile, today is another day to do better. He passed away, Father Hacala. I have this picture in my room and I was thinking about him last night. Today is another day to do better. It is another day to improve. It is another day to be better, make life better, to be better at helping people. Today is another day, another opportunity God gave us.
Hospitalizations are down - good news. No change in total hospitalizations down - good news. No change in intubations down - good news. New covid cases slightly down, 933, but still unacceptable. But down from where it was. Number of lives lost, still terrible, 306. An optimist would say the number is on the decline, a realist would say that's a tremendous amount of pain and grief for hundreds and hundreds of New Yorkers who lost a loved one.
The big question everyone is asking is the reopening. When? How? Where? I said from day one on this situation, we have to be smart. We are at a place we have never been before. Emotions run high. Be smart, follow the numbers, follow data, talk to experts. Don't get political, even in this election year even, even in this partisan time in this country where everything is political and everything is polarized - not now. And respond to facts and data and experts, not to emotion which also runs very high right now. If we do this right, it is science reopening. It's not a political exercise. It is a science. It can be based on numbers and data, and that is true. Everybody wants to reopen, caveat is reopened but don't reopen in a way that increases the spread of the virus, doesn't increase the rate of the spread of the virus. Well how do you know that? You can test. You can get numbers. Test, get a sample and see what is happening. You know that if the rate of transmission goes over one 1.1 you are in an outbreak, you're in an epidemic. So, you don't have to guess. It's not what it feels like. Get the numbers, do the testing, get the numbers, rely on the numbers.
The second fact you have to deal with as a science in this formula, do you have the hospital capacity available if that rate of infection increases? Don't go above 70% capacity, so you have a 30% buffer, so we don't wind up in the same mad scramble that we were in last time. Make sure you have ICU beds with the 30% capacity and make sure you have enough equipment. We're not going to go through who has a mask, who has a gown, who knows someone in China? Let's have at least a 30 day supply of stockpiled equipment: ventilators, masks, gowns, gloves, etc. There are facts, its science, it's data. Then what's testing? Testing, then you trace, then you isolate, and that remains the key to controlling the rate of infection.
The testing is how you monitor the rate of infection, what's happening to the rate as you increase the economic activity? I will take the test and we'll test enough people so we have enough data to make a decision. We're increasing the number of tests. It's hard. Nobody's done it on this scale before. There's been a lot of back and forth, we met with the federal government, met with the president. We have now a partnership in how to do testing. We're ramping up testing. We're moving very quickly in this state. We do more tests in this state than in any other state in the United States. We do more testing in this state than any country on the globe per capita. So, we are doing it well. We are doing it aggressively. We've increased from about 20,000 tests to about 30,000 tests per day and we're still ramping up and that's good. There's more to do more testing and more to talk about on testing, but not today.
Today, we're going to talk about tracing which is the second step after testing, right? You test, you now know what's happening on the infection rate, you can gauge your decisions based on that infection rate. Second step is trace those people who came up positive. All right, we tested. You have the data. You can adjust the opening valve, the reopening valve, now you trace. When you get a positive, you talk to that person and trace back to they have been in contact with. You with then test those people, you then isolate those people so you don't increase the rate of infection. That's what tracing is. Faster you trace, the better. You want to test right away. You think you have symptoms, you think you were exposed, come and get a test, do it today. Once you get that test results, you have data on what's happening with the infection spread. You then right away, as quickly as you can, trace that person. Who have they met with? Who have they been in close contact with over the past 14 days? And you then contact those people and say you may have been in contact with Dan. Dan tested positive. You should check your symptoms - if you develop any symptoms what we know right away and we will bring you in to take a test. That is tracing.
The problem is it's not rocket science to do it on an individual basis. The problem is the scale that we have to do this act. Yesterday we tested 4,681 people who were positive. Yesterday 4,681 people were positive. How do you now communicate with 4,681 people, trace back all the people they've been in contact with over the past 14 days close contact, and contact those people. That is an overwhelming scale to an operation that has never existed before. We do tracing now but on a very limited basis. That's why this is so hard tracing in and of itself - one person it's easy. 4,681 on one day. Today we'll have another 4,681 people. So just think of the scale on the operation. Last week we announced that Michael Bloomberg would lead the first ever testing-tracing-isolation program. Figure out, how many people, how to train them, what technology, how do we do this. And it's of a scale never been done before and by the way we need it tomorrow. There is no time to go get a university to do a study, a blueprint, and then put a plan together. We need it tomorrow, because we're literally doing it right now. We're doing the testing, we're coming up the scale on the testing. You need the tracing to come up the scale to meet what we're doing on testing.
The estimate so far is you need 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people who are in the affected are. Statewide that would be about 6,400 to 17,000 tracers, depending on what happens on the testing rate. The more people test positive, the more tracers. The less people test positive, the less tracers you need. So, these things are all linked, right? The better you do at reducing the spread of the virus, the fewer people test people test positive, and the fewer you need to trace back. It will require under any estimate, a tracing army to come up to scale very, very quickly. And Mayor Bloomberg has put together a great team who's going to work on this. He has great talent in his Bloomberg Philanthropies, Johns Hopkins University working together with the New York State Department of Health. This is that undertaking and it is massive and that's why bringing in a person with the talent of Mayor Bloomberg and the experience of Mayor Bloomberg to do this is essential. Where do you get the army? Well we have Department of health employees all across the state - counties have them, cities have them, the State has them. We'll marshal those employees - you also have a lot of government employees who are at home now getting paid but are not working. What government employees who are now existing, city, state, counties, can we deploy to become tracers and then train them, et cetera. After you go through all of that, if you don't have enough, you're going to have to hire people. And then you have to train them - right away, because nobody's done this before. They're going to need help, they're going to need technology, they're going to need monitoring and they're going to have to be tested before they can do this.
So, it's a massive undertaking. And that's Mayor Bloomberg's involvement in his generosity here is so important, and we want to offer a big thank you to Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Who I believe may be joining us by telephone or some technological means. Here he is. How are you, Mayor Mike?
Mayor Bloomberg: I'm here.
Governor Cuomo: Good to see you.
Mayor Bloomberg: Governor, I'm fine and good to see you. And I want to thank you for all your good work to lead this State through this crisis and to deliver facts and data to the public, and also a sense of hope which really is important. I know your daily press conferences have become must-see TV for a lot of people. And for the record, I thought your advice to fathers on what to say about a daughter's boyfriend was exactly right the other day. Anyways, the question on everybody's mind continues to be, "How can we begin to loosen these restrictions and begin reopening the economy?" And one of the most important steps we have to take to reopen the economy as safely as possible is to create a system of contact tracing as you just outlined. When social distancing is relaxed, contract tracing is our best hope for isolating the virus when it appears and keeping it isolated. The Governor recognizes that and since Bloomberg Philanthropies has deep experience and expertise in public health, we're glad to support the State in developing and implementing a contact tracing program.
As Andrew said, the contract tracing is a way to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus but don't know it. And doing that requires a lot of well-trained people who are coordinated and managed effectively. It is a very big undertaking just because of the scale, so we've enlisted the best public health school in the world at Johns Hopkins University. No offense, but its name Bloomberg School of Public Health, which our foundation work with on public health and other issues. And we've also teamed up with nonprofit organizations Vital Strategies and Resolve To Save Lives. They get the contract tracing program up and running a lot, has to happen first and hiring, training, deploying and managing a small army of New Yorkers as the Governor said is really the great challenge. To help the state recruit contact tracers, we've brought in a staffing organization. And we're also teamed up with CUNY and SUNY, both of which will help identify potential job applicants, and I want to thank both of them for their work in joining us. To help the state with training, Johns Hopkins has developed a training class which can be taken remotely. It will cover all the basic information of epidemics, contact tracing and privacy. There's also a test at the end of the training which you have to pass in order to be hired, so we're not going to put up people there that don't know what they're doing. We'll also put technology to use in other ways. Vital Strategies is developing three new smartphone apps. The first will help contact tracers find information and data quickly. The second will help the public to provide information to health departments. And the third will allow those in quarantine to access the guidance and services they need including the ability to report any symptoms they may be experiencing. Vital Strategies is also working directly with the state to develop protocols and workflow materials for contract tracers and mappers. That includes a comprehensive playbook that will detail the steps needed to do contact tracing effectively. And I want to make it clear, we will release that playbook publicly so cities and states around the country can use it and so can nations around the world. That way the work we do here in New York really can help fight the virus globally. We'll also bring in a group of outside experts to conduct an evaluation of the program so that other states and countries can see what worked well and identify areas they can improve on. And, we'll learn as we go, and make adjustments and share what we've learned.
Sharing in spreading best practices is something that Bloomberg Philanthropies works on with cities around the world. In about an hour I'll be getting on a call with mayors around the country, which is a call we hold every week. It's been a good way to share information and strategies. And I know all of the mayors are following the news of the contract tracing program that we are starting here and other states have also begun the process of starting. Before I turn it back over to the governor, let me just echo something that he has said repeatedly and that really is important to remember. As tough as these times are, we are New Yorkers, and we've been through a lot together, and we're going to get through this together again. So governor, back to you and thank you for everything you're doing. Together we're going to lick this and get back to a normal life that we can, we are so proud of the way the citizens of this state are behaving. Thank you all.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Mayor Bloomberg. This is such a great asset for the State of New York and all of the people in it. This is a monumental undertaking. You know, so many of these things that we talk about just never existed before. Testing of this magnitude, contact tracing of this magnitude. It's never existed. So we have to design new systems, new approaches to do this and this problem is bigger than any one of us, but it is not bigger than all of us. And using the expertise and the talent that we have we get everyone to work together here. we will do this and the mayor is exactly right. New York, he says as a New Yorker, in many cases we've dealt with challenges first. We figure it out and then we work with other places to actually learn from what we've done. I think this is going to be one of those examples. We want the best system that we can have to get New York open and to protect New Yorkers. But it will also be a laboratory to put together the best system ever put together so we can share that with other governments. And that's what Mayor Bloomberg does so well. He did as mayor and he does it now but through his philanthropy.
So, we'll develop the best system here and then what we learned we hope can benefit other people. We'll also be coordinating this contact tracing on a tri-state basis because many of the people who come into New York, live in Connecticut, live in New Jersey, go back and forth. We don't want to get limited by jurisdictions when you're doing this contact tracing. Somebody turns out, you have a trace that takes you to a person in New Jersey. Well, we work in New York, we can't go to New Jersey. Having that tri-state alliance makes tremendous sense. So I'm working with Governor Murphy and Governor Lamont on that, and I want to thank them very much. Next problem. Stone to stone across the morass, right. Problem to problem across the morass. In this situation every day is a new problem that pops up. Okay, let's handle it. Next problem. In an emergency crisis situation what happens is problems compound, right. You're in the middle of a hurricane, the power lines go down. Now the power lines go down, now the heat is off. Heat is off, now people are freezing in their homes. We didn't anticipate that. I know, but that's what happens. One problem creates another problem, it's like a bad game of dominoes. And these problems compound each other, and the combination is often unforeseen.
We have that now with the New York City subway system. Daily News did a front page story, which crystallized it, but it had been happening for weeks. And no one anticipated it, but you have a virus outbreak and conditions on the New York City subway system, for a variety of reasons, have rapidly deteriorated. When you think about what happened you can put it together in the retrospective. The COVID outbreak happens. New York City's a place of density, subways, buses are a place of density. MTA employees who run that system, care for that system, get sick, call in sick as they should. They don't want to infect other people. The number of MTA employees comes down. Number of NYPD, New York Police Department, they get sick, their numbers come down. You now have fewer MTA workers, you have fewer NYPD workers on the trains and in the stations. We have now a greater need than ever to disinfect the subways, the buses, and the stations. Why? Because you're in the middle of a pandemic, this is a place of density and you have thousands and thousands of people going through these subway stations, these turnstiles and these buses, trains and ADA vehicles. Because MTA workers are sick, NYPD officers are sick you have fewer people to monitor and maintain the system. This all happens in the midst of a public health emergency.
At the same time, you have more homeless people who now are on fewer trains and you have fewer people to outreach to the homeless people. Now you put all of this together, and then at the same time we need our essential workers to go to work. I said the other day, I have two great nightmares from day one: Nightmare one, you did everything you did, closed down, et cetera and you didn't stop the rate of increase of the virus. That would have been a nightmare. Can you imagine if we did all of this and we still saw that virus going up? That would have been a real problem. Second nightmare, the essential workers say I'm not going to work. I'm not going. The transit operators, the police, the food delivery people say it's too dangerous. I'm not going. I'm staying home too.
You don't have food, you don't have power, you don't have transportation, you don't have electric, now you see society in a really difficult situation. We need those essential workers to go to work. I am pushing every day to get our essential workers to go to work even though they see a lot of their colleagues getting ill. You need those nurses, you need those doctors in very difficult circumstances. That's why I say, they are the heroes of today. All the essential workers. How do our essential workers get to work? They need the public transit system. It's true in New York City, it's true all across the state. They need the public buses, they need the trains, they need the subways to get to work. We need them, they need the buses and they need the subways.
We are as a society, me as a spokesperson for the state, I'm saying to them every day, I need you to do this. I know it's hard, but I need you to do it. Okay, we need them to do it but what is our obligation. Our obligation is to make sure we're doing everything we can do to keep them safe. That's my personal obligation and it's the collective obligation. You want them to be there to deliver the food, what's your obligation is to do everything you're doing to make sure that they are safe while they're doing it. The MTA understood where we were with this global pandemic. They stepped up operations are were cleaning trains and buses every 72 hours, which is an amazing undertaking when you think about it. To clean all those buses and trains every 72 hours. We know the virus can live for hours or even days on a surface which means if somebody positive walks on to a train this morning, that virus can be there tomorrow and the next day. That then changes the whole focus of the problem.
You want to honor the essential workers, thank you, thank you, we'll fly airplanes. We'll have public demonstrations of gratitude. Yeah, even better than that is what you do and how you act. Let's make sure that we're doing everything we can. Let's clean, disinfect those buses and trains every 24 hours. Why? Because that's the way we best protect the health of our essential workers which makes sense if you want the essential workers to continue to come to work. It makes sense if you don't want the infection rate to go up in your society. It makes sense if you don't want the essential workers to get sick and again, it is our obligation as human beings to reciprocate and make sure we're doing everything we can.
To say disinfect every train every 24 hours is just a task that nobody has every imagined before. I would wager in the history of public transportation in this nation you never had a challenge of disinfecting every train, every 24 hours. Disinfect, how do you even disinfect a train? We clean trains but how do you disinfect? This is a whole new process, these are new chemicals. This is new equipment for workers. It's new methods. Just think about it, you have to disinfect every place that a hand could touch on a subway car. Every rail, every pole, every door, wherever a hand could touch or coughing, sneezing. Wherever droplets could land. So you have to disinfect that entire interior of the car and then you have to disinfect the stations, the handrails, everything that people could be touching. It is a massive undertaking that we've never done before.
That is the right thing to do. That is, as we said we've never done tracing before, we've done disinfecting train cars before, but so what? That's what we have to do. So figure out how to do what you have to do. This is what we have to do. I challenged the MTA to come up with a plan, they came up with a plan. They can disinfect all trains and buses every night. It can best be done by stopping train service from 1 am to 5 am every night during the pandemic so they can actually perform this service.
Now, remember the context that we're in in this pandemic. Ridership is down 92 percent. One to 5 are the slow hours, 1 am to 5 am. It's the lowest ridership. Estimate is about 10,000 people ride the system overall during that period of time. So the MTA will launch what they call the essential connector program, they'll have buses, dollar vans and if necessary, will provide for-hire vehicles to transport a person. The Uber, the Lyft, the vehicles - at no cost to the essential worker during those hours to provide transport. So, people who need transportation during 1am and 5am can have it. Will have it. Even to the extent of a for-hire vehicle paid for by the MTA. Remember, 1am to 5am - we don't have bars open, we don't have restaurants open, so you don't have a lot of traffic that you would normally have. You do have essential workers who are using our trains and subways. They will have transportation during that period of time.
This is going to be one of the most aggressive, creative, challenging undertakings that the MTA has done. It's going to require the MTA, the state, the city, the NYPD to all work together. It's not that easy to stop train service. You have to close down stations, you have to make sure people don't walk in, then you have to figure out how to clean all these trains and all these stations.
I've consulted with the elected officials on the MTA's recommendation and we all agree to accept the plan on the Essential Connector Program. The MTA is undertaking something that people would've said was virtually impossible. Trains and buses will be disinfected daily. Service will continue. The MTA will also disinfect the fleet on the Metro North and the Long Island Railroad, which is what goes out to Long Island, goes to the Northern suburbs. They can do that without any disruption in service because of the volume of ridership, et cetera.
So, just think about it. The entire public transportation system in downstate New York will be disinfected every 24 hours. This is a joint MTA, state, city partnership. We're doing a lot of things here that we've never done before. I am never one to shy away from a challenge. I don't believe government has that option. I'm never one to say, "well, that's just too much, too hard, too ambitious." We can do it. I believe we can do it. I believe we can do anything. I believe we can build bridges, I believe we can build airports, I believe we can defeat global pandemics. But this is as ambitious as anything that we've ever undertaken. It's going to require a lot of extraordinary service and effort from multiple agencies all working together.
The MTA has stepped up by recommending this plan. The state will do whatever it has to do. A big part of this falls to the city. I've spoken to Mayor de Blasio. It's going to require a lot of assistance from the NYPD, it's going to require a lot of assistance from different city agencies. Again, close down every station, close down the trains. We've never been here before. I guarantee another ten things come up when we go to do this that are also anticipated consequences.
So the mayor is really stepping up to the plate here and is doing something that no mayor has ever attempted to do before. We'll all do our part, we'll all work together, but it's a heck of an undertaking for the mayor. I applaud him for his ambition here in stepping up and taking this on. You know, it's always easier to just say no. It's always easier to say we can't do it because when you say we will try to do it, now you're changing things and whenever you change, there's opposition. Every time. So, it's always easier just to stay status quo. It's always easier not to risk. Not to try to raise the bar because maybe you can't do it, maybe there'll be problems. So it's easier just to say no. It's easier to say this is all we can do it's impossible. That's not what the mayor is doing here. The mayor is stepping up and he's stepping up in a big way. I want to applaud him for it.
I think we have the mayor who is on the telephone or some electronic means. There he is, Mayor Bill de Blasio. Welcome to Albany.
Mayor de Blasio: Thanks, Governor, it's a pleasure to be with you. Governor, that point you made about all of us together doing something different, doing something necessary, and being willing together to go someplace we've never been before. You and I have talked about this kind of idea a lot over the years. I think when we first met each other, the word "disruption" was considered a bad thing. In recent years, it's taken on a very positive connotation. That when we disrupt something that isn't work or has been thought about in a very narrow way and we go someplace new and better, that's a positive. I think what we're talking about today is exactly that. I commend you and everyone at the MTA.
I want to talk about why I think this plan is so important - in terms of our essential workers, our first responders, our healthcare heroes - why I think it's so important in terms of also addressing homelessness in a new and powerful way.
But I first want to express my appreciation, along with you, really appreciate - back on one of your previous topics - the contact tracing. Really appreciate that my predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, is stepping up such a big way for New York City and New York State. Contact tracing, the test and trace approach, is going to change everything. You and I are united in that, as well. The aggressive approach. In fact, Governor, New York City is hiring 1,000 contact tracers with healthcare background to super charge this effort. I think we are going to be able to show this country a model that's going to be extraordinarily effective in beating back this disease. I look forward to that partnership as well.
Right here on the issue of the MTA, we've all been thrown the biggest curveball of our lives with this pandemic. But look at the consistent heroism of the healthcare workers, the first responders, the grocery store workers, the pharmacists - everyone who came forward. And, Governor, I know you feel it too. It's probably the proudest moment we've had as public servants in this state, in this city, watching the heroism of these New Yorkers who have stepped up. Now, we owe it to them to understand their lives and the notion that they have a daily routine where they go into battle. They go toward the danger. They go to where the infection is, which so many people couldn't even imagine, but that's what these heroes are doing. We owe it to them to support them every way possible. You and I have talked many times about the PPEs and the basic protections. But we also owe it to them to be safe on the way to work. On the way back home to their families. So, I think what we're doing here in partnership is exactly the right thing. To say we're going to find a way to make our subway system cleaner than its probably ever been its history honestly and address this crisis in a whole new way. I agree with that and I commend you for it. And yeah, it took some disruption to say we're going to do something during this pandemic we've never done before, but it makes sense when it comes to protecting our heroes.
The second point, homelessness, look another issue you and I, Governor, have worked on for decades. Well, we know it's been on many ways an intractable issue because there wasn't always an impulse to disrupt. And here is an example of saying look, we now found new ways to get street homeless people off the street. I want to commend Commissioner Dermot Shea and everyone at the NYPD who's really focused on how to help the homeless. Commissioner Steve Banks, everyone at Homeless Services, Social Services, also those heroic outreach workers.
Governor, you know about this work, go out there day after day to engage homeless people on the streets, in the subways. Get their trust and get them to come into shelter and ultimately to permanent housing. This work has always been in some ways stymied by the reality of a homeless person who is struggling with everything their dealing with, a mental health challenge, a substance abuse challenge, riding the subway all night long. We're New Yorkers we know about this reality and it's been put in stark white by this crisis, like so many other challenges and disparities have. Well, it's an unacceptable reality and this new plan will disrupt that unacceptable reality and allow us to actually get help to people more effectively. Because if you're not going back and forth all night on a train and you're actually are coming above ground where outreach workers are there to help you. Where NYPD officers trained in homeless outreach are there to support homeless people and get them to a better situation.
Governor, you know for decades in this city somehow homeless encampments were actually tolerated. People thought oh it's the kind of thing, what can we do about that? I'm proud to say the last few years Homeless Services, NYPD, nonprofit organizations, we got together and said we're not allowing that anymore. We shut them down and we found it actually helped us to get the homeless to the help they need. This is another example of that, so I want to let you know that as we all talked about this idea and I commend you, your team in Albany, and obviously team at the MTA, Pat Foye, Sarah Feinberg. It's been a very productive conversation these last few days. And what I think we've come to together, is yeah we're going to do something unprecedented. We'll do something because we're in an emergency but we're also going to do something that's going to protect people and offer a new way to get people help who never got enough. So Governor, thank you. I think this is a partnership you're right it's not going to be easy. No one said it was going to be. But you have my full commitment, the commitment of the City commission, the NYPD and all of our agencies. We're going to make this work together and we're going to be able to look back and say we did something that actually changed people's lives for the better and as long as it takes we're going to stand with you and get this done.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mayor de Blasio. Mayor made a lot of good points. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. But nobody ever said it was going to be this hard either and I think the Mayor's point is very well taken. Look, we're doing things all across the board here that had never been done before and I think there are lessons to learn and lessons we'll take with us. Telemedicine I think is a lesson we'll take with us, tele-education, remote learning, it's a lesson we'll take with us, a new public health system is a lesson that we'll take with us and I think we're going to improve and learn from this experience with the New York City transit system because the truth is it wasn't working well or as well as it should before. We did have a problem with the homeless and Mayor de Blasio is right. I've worked on it all my life. Outreaching to homeless people is very, very hard and getting them to come in to a place that actually provide services is very, very hard. So this can actually energize the connections with outreach workers and the homeless population. And we've never had to disinfect trains like this or buses like this and they will be cleaner than ever before.
So a global pandemic, but you live, you learn, you move on and most importantly you meet the challenge. You meet the challenge and this is a daunting challenge and the Mayor is stepping into it with eyes wide open and it takes guts and it takes courage and they'll be bumps along the way I guarantee you but that's where we are and that's why we get the big bucks.
I also want to be able to say today to the essential workers, we thank you not just with words but with our actions and I want you to know we are doing everything we can to keep you and your family safe and that's what it means to say, thank you. Act with gratitude. Don't just use the words. Act with gratitude. They're on those trains. They deserve to be kept safe. They deserve to have a clean, safe ride to and from work and they're going to have it and we're going to move heaven and earth to make sure that happens.
So in a challenge what do we do? We come together and we rise to the occasion. Never did it before. I know. So we'll do it now and we'll figure out how to do it and we've overcome every obstacle that we've been thrown. We have the beast on the retreat. We're making ground every day. We just have to keep it up and we will because we are New York tough. We are smart. We are disciplined. We are unified and we are loving.
Governor Cuomo: "This virus can live on a surface for a number of days so the right thing to do is to disinfect all the trains every night which, when you think about it, is just a daunting undertaking. We've never disinfected like this before up but we have to do it and closing down the ridership from 1:00 to 5:00 will give us an opportunity to do it."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo called into 1010 WINS Radio with Susan Richard.
A rush transcript of the Governor's interview is available below:
Susan Richard: Are you with us, Governor?
Governor Cuomo: Yes, I am. How are you, Susan?
Susan Richard: I'm terrific. So this sounds like a good plan to shut down the subways on the overnights to get those trains disinfected every night which is what you ordered the MTA to do. Are you satisfied that this is going to get the job done?
Governor Cuomo: Yes, I am. It's a bold undertaking, Susan. You know so many of the things that we have to do in this situation we've never done before but necessity is the mother of invention. We have essential workers who are the heroes of this entire situation - the nurses, the doctors, the food delivery people, the police officers. They need this subway system - the buses, trains - to get to work and we have to be able to say to them they're safe and they're clean. This virus can live on a surface for a number of days so the right thing to do is to disinfect all the trains every night which, when you think about it, is just a daunting undertaking. We've never disinfected like this before up but we have to do it and closing down the ridership from 1:00 to 5:00 will give us an opportunity to do it. The ridership is way down anyway, about 90 percent down so we can provide transportation for people from 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. but it will allow us to disinfect the trains and the MTA is stepping up and I applaud them for it.
Susan Richard: Well this all came together relatively quickly and before that there was some finger-pointing between the City and the MTA about who is responsible for the homeless in particular. How smoothly was it to get everybody on the same page?
Governor Cuomo: Look, Mayor de Blasio, the MTA and I are all together on this. It is a joint effort because the whole transportation system is a joint effort. The MTA involves the State and the City. The NYPD do the security for the system so, and to do something like this everybody has to work together. It's never been done before. We've never closed down the subway system. So when you just start to think about it, every subway opening has to be protected, then you have to figure out what chemicals you use, what equipment you use. The homeless have to be taken off the train to do this obviously. You can't disinfected the train if you have homeless people on it. The Mayor pointed out rightfully so that it will now provide an opportunity to do outreach to the homeless because nobody wants them sleeping on the trains in the first place. It's not in their best interest. So it's massive and it's a little frightening in how massive it is but everybody is working together and we'll get it done.
Everything we're doing here we've never done before. We've never done this level of testing. We've never done this level of tracing. New Yorkers have never been this cooperative where their whole lives have been disrupted but you know New Yorkers do what they have to do and we will do what we have to do.
Susan Richard: Let's talk a little bit about the mechanics of this. Number one, will the MTA need to increase staffing to disinfect every train every day, and secondly, to get essential workers free transportation above ground - how is that going to work out? If I'm an essential worker, I need a ride in the overnight, who do I contact, what do I do?
Governor Cuomo: First of all, it's 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. So it is the low level of ridership during that period . The MTA will be operating buses ,will be operating a commuter vans, dollar vans and in the case where they don't have a route available they will be doing for-fire vehicles and Uber, Lyft, et cetera, so they have a plan that will still even for those few hours, people can get where they need to go, and then on the cleaning we have not new workers - we have the workers who are doing it. It's a totally different way of doing it. You need different chemicals, you know, they don't spray down normally the walls, all the corners, you know, it's anywhere that a person could touch when you think about it. It's wherever where somebody sneezes or coughs. It's wherever the droplets go. So you have to spray down the whole interior of the car. And that's never been done before but they've been working on it and we've been talking to other transit companies around the world, and there are new chemicals available, so, they going to do it. It won't be easy but they're going to do it.
Susan Richard: And so, will we be looking to the mayor to announce the specifics of who an essential worker should call if they need for-hire vehicle?
Governor Cuomo: The MTA will take about a week to actually implement the plan, which for this kind of plan is lightning fast, Susan. The MTA will then put on their website what routes they have and where they have for-hire vehicles available.
Susan Richard: And so what about the cost, A, and how long do you think this will last?
Governor Cuomo: You know, how long will it last? You tell me when the pandemic ends, I'll tell you how long it lasts. We're doing this because of the virus. When the virus is gone, we can get back to normal in so many ways and everybody wanted to be tomorrow. But I don't think anyone has a crystal ball and can tell you exactly when. The cost will be paid by the MTA. We're going to have cost issues at the MTA. But we're going to have cost issues for the city, for the state all across the board. You know when you turn off the economy the way we did, you have economic ramifications to every government, to every household. So, we'll figure that out. But first things first, you know, stone to stone across the morass. My Italian grandfather used to say if you have your health, you can figure anything else out. If you have your health, you can figure anything else out. Let's make sure we're safe and we're healthy and we'll figure out the rest, we always do, Susan.
Susan Richard: So on a much lighter note, while I have you on the phone I must ask you this. I'm not sure if you saw a professional matchmaker in the city did a survey of 2,000 of her female clients, and you and your brother are on the most wanted list for single ladies in New York City as the most desirable. So I'm just wondering if you had any comment about that.
Governor Cuomo: Well Susan, I did not see that, but now that you raise it, most wanted eligibility, my brother is married. I am not married, so I don't think he would qualify as eligible. However, I am eligible.
Susan Richard: Well I just want to say, we're both single Sagittarius from Queens, I'm just saying, just saying, just putting it out there, just saying.
Governor Cuomo: Sounds good, to me. It all started in Queens, Susan.
Susan Richard: Governor Cuomo, thank you so much and thanks for being a good sport there, we appreciate it. Alright, we'll talk to you again soon.
April 30, 2020.
Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Amid Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio Announce MTA to Disinfect New York City Transit System Daily. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-and-mayor-de
MTA Will Disinfect New York City Subway and Bus System, Metro North, Long Island Railroad
MTA to Provide Alternative Transportation to Essential Workers From 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM as Part of Essential Connector Program
Governor Cuomo: "I've consulted with the elected officials on the MTA's recommendation and we all agree to accept the plan on the Essential Connector Program. The MTA is undertaking something that people would've said was virtually impossible. Trains and buses will be disinfected daily. Service will continue. The MTA will also disinfect the fleet on the Metro North and the Long Island Railroad, which is what goes out to Long Island, goes to the Northern suburbs. They can do that without any disruption in service because of the volume of ridership, et cetera."
Cuomo: "Just think about it. The entire public transportation system in downstate New York will be disinfected every 24 hours. This is a joint MTA, state, city partnership. We're doing a lot of things here that we've never done before. I am never one to shy away from a challenge. I don't believe government has that option. I'm never one to say, 'well, that's just too much, too hard, too ambitious.' We can do it. I believe we can do it. I believe we can do anything. I believe we can build bridges, I believe we can build airports, I believe we can defeat global pandemics. But this is as ambitious as anything that we've ever undertaken. It's going to require a lot of extraordinary service and effort from multiple agencies all working together."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the MTA will disinfect the New York City Transit system, including the Metro North and Long Island Railroad, daily as the State and City continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. The MTA will also provide free alternative transportation options to essential workers during the cleaning hours of 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM that will include buses, dollar vans and for-hire vehicles as necessary.
VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Governor Cuomo: We have that now with the New York City subway system. Daily News did a front page story, which crystallized it, but it had been happening for weeks. And no one anticipated it, but you have a virus outbreak and conditions on the New York City subway system, for a variety of reasons, have rapidly deteriorated. When you think about what happened you can put it together in the retrospective. The COVID outbreak happens. New York City's a place of density, subways, buses are a place of density. MTA employees who run that system, care for that system, get sick, call in sick as they should. They don't want to infect other people. The number of MTA employees comes down. Number of NYPD, New York Police Department, they get sick, their numbers come down. You now have fewer MTA workers, you have fewer NYPD workers on the trains and in the stations. We have now a greater need than ever to disinfect the subways, the buses, and the stations. Why? Because you're in the middle of a pandemic, this is a place of density and you have thousands and thousands of people going through these subway stations, these turnstiles and these buses, trains and ADA vehicles. Because MTA workers are sick, NYPD officers are sick you have fewer people to monitor and maintain the system. This all happens in the midst of a public health emergency.
At the same time, you have more homeless people who now are on fewer trains and you have fewer people to outreach to the homeless people. Now you put all of this together, and then at the same time we need our essential workers to go to work. I said the other day, I have two great nightmares from day one: Nightmare one, you did everything you did, closed down, et cetera and you didn't stop the rate of increase of the virus. That would have been a nightmare. Can you imagine if we did all of this and we still saw that virus going up? That would have been a real problem. Second nightmare, the essential workers say I'm not going to work. I'm not going. The transit operators, the police, the food delivery people say it's too dangerous. I'm not going. I'm staying home too.
You don't have food, you don't have power, you don't have transportation, you don't have electric, now you see society in a really difficult situation. We need those essential workers to go to work. I am pushing every day to get our essential workers to go to work even though they see a lot of their colleagues getting ill. You need those nurses, you need those doctors in very difficult circumstances. That's why I say, they are the heroes of today. All the essential workers. How do our essential workers get to work? They need the public transit system. It's true in New York City, it's true all across the state. They need the public buses, they need the trains, they need the subways to get to work. We need them, they need the buses and they need the subways.
We are as a society, me as a spokesperson for the state, I'm saying to them every day, I need you to do this. I know it's hard, but I need you to do it. Okay, we need them to do it but what is our obligation. Our obligation is to make sure we're doing everything we can do to keep them safe. That's my personal obligation and it's the collective obligation. You want them to be there to deliver the food, what's your obligation is to do everything you're doing to make sure that they are safe while they're doing it. The MTA understood where we were with this global pandemic. They stepped up operations are were cleaning trains and buses every 72 hours, which is an amazing undertaking when you think about it. To clean all those buses and trains every 72 hours. We know the virus can live for hours or even days on a surface which means if somebody positive walks on to a train this morning, that virus can be there tomorrow and the next day. That then changes the whole focus of the problem.
You want to honor the essential workers, thank you, thank you, we'll fly airplanes. We'll have public demonstrations of gratitude. Yeah, even better than that is what you do and how you act. Let's make sure that we're doing everything we can. Let's clean, disinfect those buses and trains every 24 hours. Why? Because that's the way we best protect the health of our essential workers which makes sense if you want the essential workers to continue to come to work. It makes sense if you don't want the infection rate to go up in your society. It makes sense if you don't want the essential workers to get sick and again, it is our obligation as human beings to reciprocate and make sure we're doing everything we can.
To say disinfect every train every 24 hours is just a task that nobody has every imagined before. I would wager in the history of public transportation in this nation you never had a challenge of disinfecting every train, every 24 hours. Disinfect, how do you even disinfect a train? We clean trains but how do you disinfect? This is a whole new process, these are new chemicals. This is new equipment for workers. It's new methods. Just think about it, you have to disinfect every place that a hand could touch on a subway car. Every rail, every pole, every door, wherever a hand could touch or coughing, sneezing. Wherever droplets could land. So you have to disinfect that entire interior of the car and then you have to disinfect the stations, the handrails, everything that people could be touching. It is a massive undertaking that we've never done before.
That is the right thing to do. That is, as we said we've never done tracing before, we've done disinfecting train cars before, but so what? That's what we have to do. So figure out how to do what you have to do. This is what we have to do. I challenged the MTA to come up with a plan, they came up with a plan. They can disinfect all trains and buses every night. It can best be done by stopping train service from 1 am to 5 am every night during the pandemic so they can actually perform this service.
Now, remember the context that we're in in this pandemic. Ridership is down 92 percent. One to 5 are the slow hours, 1 am to 5 am. It's the lowest ridership. Estimate is about 10,000 people ride the system overall during that period of time. So the MTA will launch what they call the essential connector program, they'll have buses, dollar vans and if necessary, will provide for-hire vehicles to transport a person. The Uber, the Lyft, the vehicles - at no cost to the essential worker during those hours to provide transport. So, people who need transportation during 1am and 5am can have it. Will have it. Even to the extent of a for-hire vehicle paid for by the MTA. Remember, 1am to 5am - we don't have bars open, we don't have restaurants open, so you don't have a lot of traffic that you would normally have. You do have essential workers who are using our trains and subways. They will have transportation during that period of time.
This is going to be one of the most aggressive, creative, challenging undertakings that the MTA has done. It's going to require the MTA, the state, the city, the NYPD to all work together. It's not that easy to stop train service. You have to close down stations, you have to make sure people don't walk in, then you have to figure out how to clean all these trains and all these stations.
I've consulted with the elected officials on the MTA's recommendation and we all agree to accept the plan on the Essential Connector Program. The MTA is undertaking something that people would've said was virtually impossible. Trains and buses will be disinfected daily. Service will continue. The MTA will also disinfect the fleet on the Metro North and the Long Island Railroad, which is what goes out to Long Island, goes to the Northern suburbs. They can do that without any disruption in service because of the volume of ridership, et cetera.
So, just think about it. The entire public transportation system in downstate New York will be disinfected every 24 hours. This is a joint MTA, state, city partnership. We're doing a lot of things here that we've never done before. I am never one to shy away from a challenge. I don't believe government has that option. I'm never one to say, "well, that's just too much, too hard, too ambitious." We can do it. I believe we can do it. I believe we can do anything. I believe we can build bridges, I believe we can build airports, I believe we can defeat global pandemics. But this is as ambitious as anything that we've ever undertaken. It's going to require a lot of extraordinary service and effort from multiple agencies all working together.
The MTA has stepped up by recommending this plan. The state will do whatever it has to do. A big part of this falls to the city. I've spoken to Mayor de Blasio. It's going to require a lot of assistance from the NYPD, it's going to require a lot of assistance from different city agencies. Again, close down every station, close down the trains. We've never been here before. I guarantee another ten things come up when we go to do this that are also anticipated consequences.
So the mayor is really stepping up to the plate here and is doing something that no mayor has ever attempted to do before. We'll all do our part, we'll all work together, but it's a heck of an undertaking for the mayor. I applaud him for his ambition here in stepping up and taking this on. You know, it's always easier to just say no. It's always easier to say we can't do it because when you say we will try to do it, now you're changing things and whenever you change, there's opposition. Every time. So, it's always easier just to stay status quo. It's always easier not to risk. Not to try to raise the bar because maybe you can't do it, maybe there'll be problems. So it's easier just to say no. It's easier to say this is all we can do it's impossible. That's not what the mayor is doing here. The mayor is stepping up and he's stepping up in a big way. I want to applaud him for it.
I think we have the mayor who is on the telephone or some electronic means. There he is, Mayor Bill de Blasio. Welcome to Albany.
Mayor de Blasio: Thanks, Governor, it's a pleasure to be with you. Governor, that point you made about all of us together doing something different, doing something necessary, and being willing together to go someplace we've never been before. You and I have talked about this kind of idea a lot over the years. I think when we first met each other, the word "disruption" was considered a bad thing. In recent years, it's taken on a very positive connotation. That when we disrupt something that isn't work or has been thought about in a very narrow way and we go someplace new and better, that's a positive. I think what we're talking about today is exactly that. I commend you and everyone at the MTA.
I want to talk about why I think this plan is so important - in terms of our essential workers, our first responders, our healthcare heroes - why I think it's so important in terms of also addressing homelessness in a new and powerful way.
But I first want to express my appreciation, along with you, really appreciate - back on one of your previous topics - the contact tracing. Really appreciate that my predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, is stepping up such a big way for New York City and New York State. Contact tracing, the test and trace approach, is going to change everything. You and I are united in that, as well. The aggressive approach. In fact, Governor, New York City is hiring 1,000 contact tracers with healthcare background to super charge this effort. I think we are going to be able to show this country a model that's going to be extraordinarily effective in beating back this disease. I look forward to that partnership as well.
Right here on the issue of the MTA, we've all been thrown the biggest curveball of our lives with this pandemic. But look at the consistent heroism of the healthcare workers, the first responders, the grocery store workers, the pharmacists - everyone who came forward. And, Governor, I know you feel it too. It's probably the proudest moment we've had as public servants in this state, in this city, watching the heroism of these New Yorkers who have stepped up. Now, we owe it to them to understand their lives and the notion that they have a daily routine where they go into battle. They go toward the danger. They go to where the infection is, which so many people couldn't even imagine, but that's what these heroes are doing. We owe it to them to support them every way possible. You and I have talked many times about the PPEs and the basic protections. But we also owe it to them to be safe on the way to work. On the way back home to their families. So, I think what we're doing here in partnership is exactly the right thing. To say we're going to find a way to make our subway system cleaner than its probably ever been its history honestly and address this crisis in a whole new way. I agree with that and I commend you for it. And yeah, it took some disruption to say we're going to do something during this pandemic we've never done before, but it makes sense when it comes to protecting our heroes.
The second point, homelessness, look another issue you and I, Governor, have worked on for decades. Well, we know it's been on many ways an intractable issue because there wasn't always an impulse to disrupt. And here is an example of saying look, we now found new ways to get street homeless people off the street. I want to commend Commissioner Dermot Shea and everyone at the NYPD who's really focused on how to help the homeless. Commissioner Steve Banks, everyone at Homeless Services, Social Services, also those heroic outreach workers.
Governor, you know about this work, go out there day after day to engage homeless people on the streets, in the subways. Get their trust and get them to come into shelter and ultimately to permanent housing. This work has always been in some ways stymied by the reality of a homeless person who is struggling with everything their dealing with, a mental health challenge, a substance abuse challenge, riding the subway all night long. We're New Yorkers we know about this reality and it's been put in stark white by this crisis, like so many other challenges and disparities have. Well, it's an unacceptable reality and this new plan will disrupt that unacceptable reality and allow us to actually get help to people more effectively. Because if you're not going back and forth all night on a train and you're actually are coming above ground where outreach workers are there to help you. Where NYPD officers trained in homeless outreach are there to support homeless people and get them to a better situation.
Governor, you know for decades in this city somehow homeless encampments were actually tolerated. People thought oh it's the kind of thing, what can we do about that? I'm proud to say the last few years Homeless Services, NYPD, nonprofit organizations, we got together and said we're not allowing that anymore. We shut them down and we found it actually helped us to get the homeless to the help they need. This is another example of that, so I want to let you know that as we all talked about this idea and I commend you, your team in Albany, and obviously team at the MTA, Pat Foye, Sarah Feinberg. It's been a very productive conversation these last few days. And what I think we've come to together, is yeah we're going to do something unprecedented. We'll do something because we're in an emergency but we're also going to do something that's going to protect people and offer a new way to get people help who never got enough. So Governor, thank you. I think this is a partnership you're right it's not going to be easy. No one said it was going to be. But you have my full commitment, the commitment of the City commission, the NYPD and all of our agencies. We're going to make this work together and we're going to be able to look back and say we did something that actually changed people's lives for the better and as long as it takes we're going to stand with you and get this done.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mayor de Blasio. Mayor made a lot of good points. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. But nobody ever said it was going to be this hard either and I think the Mayor's point is very well taken. Look, we're doing things all across the board here that had never been done before and I think there are lessons to learn and lessons we'll take with us.
Telemedicine I think is a lesson we'll take with us, tele-education, remote learning, it's a lesson we'll take with us, a new public health system is a lesson that we'll take with us and I think we're going to improve and learn from this experience with the New York City transit system because the truth is it wasn't working well or as well as it should before. We did have a problem with the homeless and Mayor de Blasio is right. I've worked on it all my life. Outreaching to homeless people is very, very hard and getting them to come in to a place that actually provide services is very, very hard. So this can actually energize the connections with outreach workers and the homeless population. And we've never had to disinfect trains like this or buses like this and they will be cleaner than ever before.
April 30, 2020.
Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on MSNBC Live with Katy Tur and Chuck Todd. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/audio-rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-guest-msnbc-live-katy-tur-and-chuck-todd
Governor Cuomo: "I want them to know that they have safe, clean, decent transportation. And that means we have to disinfect the trains every 24 hours. The virus can live on a train for two or three days. So, we're starting that next week. It's first time ever. We've never disinfected trains like this before.
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on MSNBC Live with Katy Tur and Chuck Todd to discuss New York's ongoing effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
AUDIO of the Governor's interview is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor's interview is available:
Chuck Todd: Joining me now is the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. Governor Cuomo thank you for spending a few minutes with us. I know we want to talk a little bit more about the contact tracing program. I want to start with this. I know you're working with Bloomberg Philanthropies on this and that it is sort of a public, private partnership. I guess my question is should it be a public, private partnership, number one? And number two, is this enough? Are you still going to need federal help for the size of the contact tracing army that you're going to need?
Governor Cuomo: Thanks. Good to be with you, Chuck. Look, we're at a place that we've never been before. We have these big looming challenges, frightening, uncharted water. I understand there's an initial resistance to try something big, try something new. A lot of risk involved, but we don't really have an option. We have to do what we have to do, that's what made this country this country.
We're all talking about testing. We have get to get testing up to scale as soon as you get testing up to scale you have to have the tracing. The testing alone, by the way, can help you monitor the virus, monitor the spread, inform you on the reopening. Then you have to get the tracing to actually slow the spread. The numbers are the problem on tracing. We did testing yesterday, we had 4,600 positives yesterday. Tracing means you take all of those 4,600 positives from yesterday and you start going down and tracing all the contacts. That is an overwhelming task, so yes, we estimate between 6,000 to 17,000 people in the state. Mike Bloomberg is organizing the effort for us.
How do you do it? How do you train? How do you test? How do you recruit people this quickly? But it's a massive undertaking.
Chuck Todd: I don't mean to throw back, we know that, I guess we could use this as AmeriCorps, you could create sort of a HealthCorps if the federal government wanted in on this. Is that something you think that you would like to see because in New York you're going to have a large unemployment line. This is one way, at least temporarily to find some people work.
Governor Cuomo: Don't worry about throwing back, Chuck. Would I like to see the federal government involved? Of course, of course. I'd like to see the federal government involved with the recruitment and the people and the funding. So, of course, but we do what we have to do. We are where we are so we can talk about what we would like to see. In the meantime, I have to get things running here tomorrow. We're dealing with the situation we have and we'll put together the army, so to speak.
Mike Bloomberg, who's a great talent, has stepped up to help. To the extent the federal government wants to get involved and wants to help, I say amen.
Chuck Todd: Katy?
Katy Tur: I'm at Grand Central. Let me speak for the millions of Americans that live in the tri-state area and are wondering this: How am I supposed to safely get on mass transit once this shutdown starts to end and the restrictions start to ease? What is my commute going to look like?
Governor Cuomo: Well, Katy, we announced something today talking about doing something we've never done before. We are starting to disinfect every subway train every night. For the first time ever, we're going to close down service from 1:00 am to 5:00 am. That four-hour shutdown will allow us to disinfect all the trains, New York City subway trains, Metro North that goes North, Long Island Rail Road that goes out to the railroad. Because we have the essential workers, who were so grateful to because they're coming to work every day even though they know the risks. The people in the hospitals, they food delivery people. We all say thank you. But gratitude is best acted upon, right?
I want them to know that they have safe, clean, decent transportation. And that means we have to disinfect the trains every 24 hours. The virus can live on a train for two or three days. So, we're starting that next week. It's first time ever. We've never disinfected trains like this before. The 1:00 to 5:00 a.m. hours will be covered by the MTA. They'll provide alternative transportation be it buses or dollar vans, or they'll use Uber, Lyft, et cetera, if they don't have a route to get people home.
But the ridership is way down. It's down 90 percent, and 1:00 to 5:00 a.m. are the least traveled hours. It's another thing we never imagined doing. But we have to do and we're going to do it. And Mayor de Blasio, New York City mayor, myself, the surrounding county executives, we're all in agreement and we're going to start in a week.
Katy Tur: I think ridership is obviously down. Just look around me, there is nobody here in Grand Central. 90 percent down as you said. What happens though when the State starts to reopen and when people start to get back on the subways and in larger numbers? How do you social distance on a New York City subway? How do you not touch anything on a New York City subway?
Governor Cuomo: You don't, is the short answer. That's one reason why the virus spreads so quickly in the city, there are a few reasons. Number one, it was coming from Europe and nobody had had an idea. We closed down China. But by the time we closed down China travel, the virus went to Europe and then we got the virus from Europe. Two million people came from Europe during the time period in early January and February up to March, and we had no idea. But it is also the density of New York City. You put your finger right on it, Katy. It's the subways, it's the buses, it's the sidewalks. That's why now what we're doing is disinfecting is going to be a very big deal. You can't really open the subways ever until you have the pandemic under control. Because, you're right, you can't socially distance on a subway platform. And that's why we have to phase in the reopening of the economy and phase it in with the full demand of the subway system. Because if you open up everything, people will go right back to the subways, the virus spread will go through the roof in a matter of days, I guarantee it.
Katy Tur: So Governor, are you saying you're not going to reopen the subways now for - until there is a vaccine? Or until there is a treatment? I mean what you just said seems to me that we're not going to be getting back on mass transit en masse for the foreseeable future.
Governor Cuomo: Yeah, well first of all, the subways are open now, right? We never closed the subways. We have to keep the subways open because essential workers need the subways to get to work. You close down the subways, you don't have doctors, you don't have nurses, you don't have food delivery people, you don't have municipal employees. So, the subways are open. If you reopen the economy fully, then you will drive many people into mass transit and many people on the sidewalks and you can't reopen the economy until you know you can handle the pandemic. So it's the economy first, sidewalks are second, restaurants are second, bars are second, right? It's when can you increase the density and volume? That's tied to reopening the economy, but the subways are open.
Chuck Todd: Governor, at the end of the day you're going to have to make some tough choices on your budgets going forward. There is just so much inundation, there are so many needs, there are going to be a lot of people that say we have to fix this, we need to fix that, you need to pick and choose. I'm curious as you prepare New Yorkers, what are services that are likely going to be something you might have to cut back for a while in order to prioritize the health and safety of another line of workers? I mean, are there certain government services that's New Yorkers are going to have to prepare themselves for not having or not having it the way they had it before?
Governor Cuomo: Chuck, first, I'm not going to, tough decisions. Every governor has to make tough decisions every day in this situation, right. Closedown was a tough decision. All of these are tough decisions. But, that comes with the job. But, I'm not going to pick between the health and safety of any worker. And, yes, the budgets are going to be tight. The economy closed down, ravaged every state government and every local government. But before we get to triage on the state side or local government side, I want to see the federal government step up and do their job. They have not funded state and local governments. They want to fund airlines, they want to fund hotels, they want to fund restaurants, big corporations. But they haven't funded state and local governments.
State and local governments, what does that mean? That means police, fire, healthcare workers, all the people we now glorify as heroes. That's who state and local governments fund. And for Washington to be saying they're not going to fund state and local governments, states can go bankrupt, was Senator McConnell's statement, okay. States can go bankrupt. They want to help the economy, they want states to go bankrupt? I mean, can you find a single economist who would say, that'll help the markets, letting states go bankrupt. So they have to step up. They have to do their job. They want to take care—
Chuck Todd: Did you really believe him? Did you really believe him when he said that or did you think it was a negotiating ploy? It certainly looked like he was looking to horse trade on this, and whether you like it or not—
Governor Cuomo: I can't believe. No, Chuck, I can't believe. I'm shocked. Gambling.
Chuck Todd: I guess the question is, what is the better way to convince some of these conservatives that New York's budget is New York's budget, Florida's budget is Florida's budget?
Governor Cuomo: Well, first of all, it wasn't just Senator McConnell, and I can't believe he would say such an obnoxious comment in public just to negotiate in Washington some back room deal. Save that garbage for the back room deal, right, Chuck? And he doubled down on it. He said states should go bankrupt and then he said this will be a blue state bailout. Then Senator Scott from Florida said the same thing, why should we bail out these Democrats, right? Like it's only Democrats that get coronavirus. This partisanship is toxic and poison. But they have to step up and fund, they can't just say we're funding corporate America, but working Americans, they're on their own. They can't say it. Or they can say it, they won't get away with it.
Katy Tur: Sorry to interrupt you guys. Governor Cuomo, I've got a question about the supply chain. There's already talk about some meat being limited on the grocery market shelves. Are there supply chain issues that are keeping you up at night?
Governor Cuomo: A lot of things are keeping me up at night, Katie. Supply chain issues more on the medical equipment and PPE, et cetera. So far, so good on the essential services, if you will. Food, power, public transportation. That was my nightmare, you know, one of my early nightmares was what happens if you say to the essential workers go to work and they say no? They say it's too dangerous, I'm afraid of this COVID virus. You want to see real anarchy? No food, no public transportation, no power. So having the essential workers stand up the way they did and show up the way they did, they were the thin line between chaos and stability, and that's why when it comes to the subways and keeping them clean and doing all sorts of extraordinary work, it's the least we can do to show our gratitude and to keep those services running. But on that side of the equation, we haven't seen any problems. I understand about the meat processing plants, but we haven't seen it or felt it.
Chuck Todd: Governor Cuomo, thanks for spending a few minutes with both of us here this afternoon, much appreciated, stay safe, stay healthy.
Governor Cuomo: Thanks. Thanks Chuck.
April 30, 2020.
Rush Transcript: Governor Cuomo is a Guest on the Ellen Degeneres Show. https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/rush-transcript-governor-cuomo-guest-ellen-degeneres-show
Governor Cuomo: "What we were asking people to do was extraordinary. I mean, lock yourself in your house, close your business, don't go outThe only way to get it done was relieved to give people the facts, explain the situation, and then they had to agree to do it. It was almost a voluntary compliance. And New Yorkers can be a difficult, cynical bunchBut I needed them to buy in, especially given the degree of difficulty that we were going to have to actually implement these thingsAnd that's what the people in New York did and I think that's what you have seen across the country."
Cuomo: "This is an extraordinarily stressful time and it is for everyone, so I wanted people to know that I feel it also. I'm going through it in my life. I'm worried about my family, I'm worried about my mother. And then you're in this hellish situation where you can't even go see the people who you love who you want to reach out. I can't even go see my mother - she gets offended when I say it, but she's a senior person. I'm out there, I'm moving around, who knows what I get exposed to. I can't even go see her. You're afraid to hug someone. You're afraid to kiss someone. At this time when you need comfort probably more than you've ever needed it."
Earlier today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo was a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
A rush transcript of the Governor's interview is available below:
Ellen DeGeneres: Over the last couple of months our first guest leadership has not only help to the State of New York, but also the whole nation cope with these uncertain times, please welcome the Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo.
Governor Cuomo: Good to be with you. Thank you, Ellen.
Ellen DeGeneres: Thank you so much - thanks for your leadership and thanks for taking the time, you are a very busy man. And everybody loves you right now. I think that you can feel the love from us, but you have always been honest and upfront about the information, and we have needed that. You must feel how necessary what you are doing is for all of us right now.
Governor Cuomo: Well, thank you. The situation became so bizarre so quickly, Ellen. What we were asking people to do was extraordinary. I mean, lock yourself in your house, close your business, don't go out. Just think about it. So, government really doesn't have the ability to enforce that. The only way to get it done was relieved to give people the facts, explain the situation, and then they had to agree to do it. It was almost a voluntary compliance. And New Yorkers can be a difficult, cynical bunch. And I knew that we were asking them to do extraordinary things. So, I just laid out the facts and said, "Here are the facts. This is what you need to know. I recommend this and this is why." But I needed them to buy in, especially given the degree of difficulty that we were going to have to actually implement these things. And people are smart, if you give them the facts and they know, they trust the facts and they trust the person who is giving them the facts, they will do the right thing. And that's what the people in New York did and I think that's what you have seen across the country.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially in New York because it was a hot spot early on. And now the state is doing well, right?
Governor Cuomo: Right now, the numbers are on the way down. We still have more higher number of cases than just about anywhere else. And also, interestingly, now, they are now discovering that we were all looking at China. By the time we acted on China, the virus had been out of China and had gone to Europe. And the virus that came to New York came from Europe, not China. And much earlier than we even thought.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yeah, yeah, I am hearing that possibly in California it was here in October.
Governor Cuomo: Well, you know, we were hearing about it. There are so many lessons to learn when we go back and do the retrospective on this. But we were hearing about it in November, December in China. Global pandemic. Yeah, the virus gets on a plane and it goes to Europe and it goes to New York and California. So, there is no time to delay in a situation like this. And I think we all have a lot to learn from this, because by the time we actually acted and enacted travel bans, we were closing the door on the barn and the horse was already gone. I think that is clear.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yeah, yeah. It is so devastating, because I think that nobody really thought about a pandemic except maybe Bill Gates. But you know, there a lot of people who didn't know that this was a possibility. And then, it is a whole new level, because we haven't had this for 100 years, but it is the economy that is affected in a different way. We did not realize the effect that it is going to have on everything. And it is hard to wrap our heads around how we are all going to get back to some sense of normalcy.
Governor Cuomo: Well you're right. Global pandemic, if you look at the textbooks, they've been talking about a global pandemic for a long time. But they've been talking about a lot of things for a long time. You're right, we've never had it so it was never actualized for us. We didn't really fully experience what it was like. Then it happens. No one's been here before. It's a scramble for everyone on every level. This action that we're taking is unprecedented and we don't even know what the future is. Which is probably the first time in my lifetime that we've been in this situation. No one can tell you what's going to happen one month, two months, three months down the road.
It's all uncharted territory. You have to keep moving forward, take the next step, be the most educated as you can in the next step. It's a very difficult time when people are basically out of control, nobody can give them answers. Nobody knows that the future and the only hard point you have is at one point we'll have a vaccine and then you can really be safe when we have the vaccine, but we don't know if we're going to have a vaccine for 12 months or 14 months or 18 months.
Ellen DeGeneres: But then we also have the vaccine for the flu and people get vaccinated for the flu and they get the flu anyway.
Governor Cuomo: Yeah, or they get a mutation of the flu anyway. At one point, we'll have a vaccine for this virus. The virus may mutate, come back in a mutated form and you would need a vaccine for that, but you'd be starting with the first vaccine. There's no doubt that the vaccine is going to be very helpful and I think give people comfort. What I'm wondering is when people actually have comfort again. We can say, just the way we needed buy in to close down, you're going to need buy in to open up. I can stand up and say, "don't worry, it's safe. Everybody get back on the subway and get back on the buses." It's not going to be that easy.
They started to reopen China and people were very slow to come back. They now get the severity of this issue and they're going to have to believe that the danger is abated before they resume life as usual. Especially in a city like New York, where it is all about the density. We had the cases coming from Europe and nobody knew, but the spread it's like fire through dry grass because you can't socially distance in New York. You can't walk down the sidewalk and be socially distant. You can't ride the subway and be socially distant. Los Angeles, California it's a different geography, different density.
People are going to really have to feel comfortable before they go back to normal, that's for sure, if there ever is a back to normal - or a new normal, as we talk about.
Ellen DeGeneres: I think that's the thing, it will be a new normal because I can't imagine what it's going to be like - even when we have the vaccine, I think we've all become so scared of all the different symptoms. They keep surprising us. There's all these new things that you hear about that we didn't know that were the headaches, were the fever, or the asymptomatic, blood clots - it's just keeps surprising us in different ways, right?
Governor Cuomo: I think that's for sure. And look, you'll have it in the back of your mind always. Well, what's the next one going to be? What's the next public health risk? Is this coronavirus coming back? Is it another virus coming back? There's going to be a form of PTSD I think for a generation. It was after 9/11 happened in New York. Everybody was affected by 9/11. You heard a bang in New York for 5 years afterward and everybody jumped. It just introduces into your psyche a whole new fear.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yeah, right. Okay, we have to take a break and then we're going to talk some more with Governor Cuomo.
And we're back - Andy, yes?
Andy Lassner: Yeah, I just wanted to say one thing - a lot of Ellen's staff, myself included, some of the producers, Lauren and Johnny and Mary, we're all native New Yorkers and I can tell you that across the board, my mother is 82, sitting in her apartment in Manhattan, and across the board what we keep hearing is what a great job you're doing bringing comfort to these people. And it is so important at a time where there is a lack of some honest information coming out to have someone like you, and I think it's why you've resonated across the whole country because people can tell honesty and we appreciate that.
Governor Cuomo: Well thank you.
Andy Lassner: Absolutely.
Ellen DeGeneres: I just want to say that Andy is my producer and he's only allowed in the garden because we're socially distancing so he can only talk from the yard, that's why he's out there.
Governor Cuomo: No, I noticed him out there. I was going to say something that I thought better of it. But thank you for your nice words. Look, as I said in the beginning, we needed people to buy in, so I wanted them to have the facts and I wanted them to have the information and I also wanted to communicate that this is not a governmental issue. It's a social issue. It's a personal issue. People are afraid, people are anxious. They've never been here before. They have all sorts of pressure they've never had before. You know we have domestic violence going up, we have mental health issues going up. This is an extraordinarily stressful time and it is for everyone, so I wanted people to know that I feel it also. I'm going through it in my life. I'm worried about my family, I'm worried about my mother. And then you're in this hellish situation where you can't even go see the people who you love who you want to reach out. I can't even go see my mother - she gets offended when I say it, but she's a senior person. I'm out there, I'm moving around, who knows what I get exposed to. I can't even go see her. You're afraid to hug someone. You're afraid to kiss someone. At this time when you need comfort probably more than you've ever needed it. It is like a hell where you are isolated not just in your home, you are isolated personally, at a time when you need some association and you need relationships probably more than ever. So it just works on so many levels and it's so upsetting and disturbing, and again, nobody can tell you when it ends, how it ends. So it is, look, we've never been through anything like this. I think, Ellen, we're actually better on the other side. You talk about the World War II generation, people who have gone through real crises in their life and you learn from them and maybe it hardens you and you come back better, but it's going to be life-changing, hard, disruptive and we will never be the same. I just hope we're better for it.
Ellen DeGeneres: Well, I can tell you one thing. We have to take a break. But I can tell you one thing. Just, you are a calming voice in this. Like Andy said, even though it is all disturbing news and it is all sad, we watch you and feel better listening to you because we know it's the real truth and we are getting comforted no matter how bad the news is because this is coming from you.
Ellen DeGeneres: We are back with the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. So, you had a meeting with the President last week. Let's hear how that went.
Governor Cuomo: Swimmingly.
Ellen DeGeneres: All right, you do not even need to - Go ahead.
Governor Cuomo: The President and I don't have a warm and fuzzy relationship. He is not much of a fan of my politics and we have been going back and forth for many years now and that's okay. But we sat down, we had a meeting about this issue of testing, which is going to be very important going forward. Nobody really understands it. Nobody has really done it before. We have to bring this testing to a scale that has been unheard of, and there has been a lot of back and forth. Does the federal government do it? Do the state governments do it? Et cetera. And, in truth, we both have to do it because we both have responsibilities. So, I just wanted to sit down with them and sort of figure how do we do it? Who does it? What do I do? What do you do? And let's just cut to the chase on this. It was actually a good conversation, and look, credit where credit is due, I know that the President's people they are not my biggest fans, and that is okay. But we actually did what we were supposed to do, Ellen, and I think that is important because nobody really cares what the President thinks about me or what I think about the President, right? Who cares about all these emotions in politics and all this stuff? Just do your job. Do your job. So that is what we did. We have a good template going forward. We are going to work to double the number of tests in this state which is a big deal because the testing is the only matrix you have to move forward. When do you reopen, how fast do you reopen, where do you reopen. The only gauge you have as you go through this is if you're testing and you're actually watching what happens to the infection rate. So as you're moving towards reopening, are you moving that infection rate? Are more people getting infected? To do that, you have to do testing. So it was a productive meeting, and we have a game plan, and I think we have a game plan not just for New York but for California and all the other states.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yes because you can say you're going to have all that testing in one state but then another state opens early like Georgia or Florida or these people that want to start opening businesses, which I mean, all these businesses that aren't really essential like tattoo parlors or you know whatever. I guess if you are really in into tattoos it's essential but, you know, they're opening these businesses. What happens when these people decide to travel to another state that we have stay at home, so I mean it's just dangerous to allow that to happen if people come to us.
Governor Cuomo: There's no doubt about it and that's why we try to operate, in the Northeast we're operating with seven states as one coalition precisely for that reason. If Connecticut opens its beaches all the New Yorkers will go to Connecticut to go to the beach. So you have to coordinate and we have about seven states that are working together to coordinate. California is coordinating with neighboring states because people are so desperate to get out and do things that they will go to the next state. In theory Georgia is far away from New York but if someone was really desperate for a tattoo they could now be going to Georgia to get their tattoo. How you get a tattoo and socially distance I'm not really sure. You're supposed to stay six feet away. I guess you could get a tattoo if you had a really long needle and very good aim to probably get a tattoo from six feet away but I wouldn't want that tattoo anyway.
Ellen DeGeneres: You know what, you're giving tattoo artists a challenge. They're going to start developing these six-foot long needles and that's exactly what I was going to say is they're going to start using six-foot long needles, and why not?
Governor Cuomo: You just need good aim. You could do it with very good aim.
Ellen DeGeneres: Right. That's true. You're challenging them. All right, we'll take a break. More with the Governor after this.
Ellen DeGeneres: All right, we're back with Governor Cuomo. Can I say that I am a "Cuomosexual?" You know that that's going around, that people are saying they're Cuomosexuals.
Governor Cuomo: I think that's a good thing. I don't think it's a bad thing.
Ellen DeGeneres: It's not a bad thing. People are in love with you. It started with Trevor Noah but it includes your brother Chris. You're both Cuomos. I enjoy both of you very much.
Governor Cuomo: Yes, but you enjoy me more. Didn't you say that earlier?
Ellen DeGeneres: Yes.
Governor Cuomo: Yes.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yes, I can say that right now because I'm talking to you but then when I talk to him I'll say he is my favorite. It's like I know you have this competition with who the mother loves more and I understand all that but you're both charming. You're both adorable. Now you've obviously already had this relationship that's adorable but do you think this brought you closer together because he contracted COVID-19?
Governor Cuomo: No, you can't be closer than I am with my brother Chris. We have been all our lives. He is my best friend - my little best friend - but we have a very special relationship. I just felt bad during that whole coronavirus thing. I mean one of the peculiar, hellish facts: he's sick, his wife gets sick, he has the kids in the house and I can't even go to help. That's one of the bizarre things here so I have my brother sick and whatever they say, well, you're young, don't worry - you still worry and he had it and I couldn't even get close to him and nobody could go over the house to help. It really is so miserable this situation in so many ways. He's better, he's good. His wife is better. Now his son has it, which is what happens, it just works it's way through the family. Talk about guts, the day he got diagnosed with it, he went on air that night. That took real guts. I don't care how strong you are, they call you up and they say, "You tested positive for coronavirus," you have to have some butterflies in your stomach. He went right on the air that night and I think he did a great public service because he shared it with people. He took the mystery off it and he showed what it was like every step of the way and we actually had some fun with it so it all worked, thank God.
Ellen DeGeneres: Yeah, it really did. It worked in a way that made it more personal when you know somebody or somebody that you watch and you feel like you have a relationship with them. You can see the pain in his eyes, you can see when he had a fever. He looked so sick. Anyway, I just think that you're amazing. When you run for president, I will be behind you all the way, because that's going to be exciting to watch you run.
Governor Cuomo: No comment.
Ellen DeGeneres: You're supposed to say something now.
Governor Cuomo: No comment. I'm Governor of the great State of New York and I'm happy.
Ellen DeGeneres: I do think that will happen at some point and I think it'll be a great thing when it does happen. Thank you so much for all you're doing. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me and send my love to your little brother and tell him I'm very happy he's feeling better. My love to the family.
Governor Cuomo: Thank you, Ellen. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be with you.
Ellen DeGeneres: Thanks, nice to be with you too. My love to the boyfriend.
