NY Gov. Cuomo Updates on Coronavirus Cases

nation to people during this time, I think positive information, factual information is vitally important, so people need to have a realistic basis for action instead of listening to all the hype that if you turn on cable TV you will hear that now we have been testing. 24 hours a day, as you know, we are doing aggressive follow-up testing because we want to find as many people who test positive so we can get them out of circulation. We have 21 new

cases

that we found, so a total of 76 in New York state right now we have 11 in New York City 57 in Westchester County two in Rockland County in Nassau County and two in Saratoga County the two in Saratoga County are obviously new the additional numbers are seven additional in New York City since yesterday and 23 additional in Westchester the 23

cases

in Westchester are all related to the New Rochelle situation 7 in New York City, two people got off a cruise ship, five appear to be community infections, one of those people is in a hospital in the Guerras branch in Saratoga, both of them, one is a 57-year-old pharmacist, one is a 52-year-old woman who was in contact with a positive person from Pennsylvania at a conference in Miami, like I said, 76 and that brings the total for Westchester to 57 cases.

Westchester is an obvious problem for us. They talk about the contingent in groups and then the groups tend to infect more and more people, so obviously you have to pay special attention to those situations. I spoke with Westchester County Executive George Latimer, New Rochelle Mayor Nome Branson, Congresswoman Nita. Lowey, I spoke to Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins ​​about this and all of the respective health commissioners, we already said we were going to close the SAR school and the Westchester day school and the Westchester Torah SAR school that were supposed to close until on March 14 with this new information that we may need to reset that quarantine period that we were checking to see if one of the new cases was in close proximity to people after the initial establishment of the quarantine, the quarantine is 14 days from the last possible exposure, so with these new cases there is a possibility that there may have been additional subsequent exposure and that is what we are checking for now, so there is a possibility that those quarantine periods could be extended.

We are also going to instruct that nursing home situations in that immediate area of ​​New Rochelle again suspend outside visitors, nursing homes are the most problematic environment for us with this disease so we are very cautious with homes nursing homes, assisted living facilities, senior housing, etc. and we are now doing a census of those types of facilities in this immediate area of ​​New Rochelle. to implement that position there are no external visitors voluntary quarantine there have been some reports that people who are in voluntary quarantine are not following the voluntary quarantine when we say that you are in preventive quarantine which is a serious situation we assume that you will act in good faith and that you will follow the rules of voluntary quarantine people who are in voluntary quarantine are issued specific rules violating those rules is first, I think it is disrespectful towards members of the community, it does not honor your responsibility as a citizen and you can be putting people in danger so although it is called preventive quarantine which is a serious situation we hope that they comply with it if they do not comply and we know that people are not complying with the voluntary quarantine there are other measures that we could take so please respect the order of voluntary quarantine.

Furthermore, price gouging remains a problem. I was the former attorney general. I presented these cases. I want companies to know that they could lose their license for price gouging. This is serious. It's not just price increases. This abusive price increase. an emergency situation in which the public is being exploited and there are specific legal provisions for price gouging in an emergency situation. I went through this during Superstorm Sandy. We have a customer hotline number at 800 695. I will call the state police. When doing research, they will be thorough. I have asked local police departments to do investigations as well, so please don't do that again.

It's disrespectful, it's also illegal and you will get caught when it comes to this scaremongering with mask sales on eBay, Facebook, etc. I'm also investigating cases I did as attorney general that traced back to stolen property. I think eBay and Facebook should play a more constructive role here, letting them police their own sites. I understand the freedom of the Internet, the freedom of the Internet, yes, but you are not supposed to sell stolen goods and I think eBay and Facebook basically realize that when you see these masks, they are medical masks, where do they come from?

You know the person didn't make them in his basement. to come from somewhere, so I would ask a BAE on Facebook without getting into a philosophical argument about Internet freedom, just act like good corporate citizens and keep an eye on your own websites and what you are offering to people, a Couple more points about the federal government. help I spoke today with Congresswoman Nita Lowey, as I said yesterday, I do not believe that the supplemental appropriations bill provides enough funds for New York, New York, I have obtained a total of thirty-five million dollars, we had already appropriated Forty million dollars, we're probably spending at a rate of about thirty million dollars a week right now, that's not taking into account capital costs for equipment purchases, potential testing costs, reimbursement to organizations of local health care, so I told the congresswoman that the $35,000,000 is not enough, the congresswoman also knows my general feeling that New York has been taking the brunt of this federal government since day one, across the board, They started with the assault income tax, they won't approve the Second Avenue subway, the next phase they won't approve congestion. prices, they won't approve skytrain from LaGuardia Airport, they won't approve gateway tunnels coming from New Jersey, then they took this gratuitous action of ending a global commuter program to extort and exploit us to actually provide access to the DMV . database because they want undocumented drivers, so these were all free acts and at one point enough is enough, Congresswoman Lowey has been phenomenal.

I've known her for many years, she worked with my father, in fact, before she was a big supporter of New York, she got us. funding for the Tappan Zee Bridge, so she is very effective as a legislator and I went over the situation with her and she said this is just a starting point and she will work deliberately to present our case to the federal government and if she gets a chance at subsequent legislation or a subsequent opportunity to amend this legislation that she would take that into consideration our relationship with the CDC is also problematic on an ongoing basis we have the ability to test we have a sophisticated state laboratory we have sophisticated laboratories in our state we are not dependent on the CDC to perform the tests.

The CDC is a bottleneck for this nation in testing, you go to the CDC, the tests have to come back to Atlanta, they have to do the tests and then they have to send them back, I think. CD Slee's CDC was caught off guard. I think they are slow in their response and I think they are slowing down the state. We needed CDC approval for a lot of these things, so first we could only use the CDC we could only ship. testing to the CDC, then we implored them to allow the state to do its own testing, finally they allowed the state to do its own testing, it became clear that we needed more capacity than just state testing done in a state lab, so we asked that allowed us to hire our commercial labs, which took a long time to get that approval, now we have approval for the outside lab to hire the next hurdle is something called automated testing, which is done robotically and is much faster, so the labs we have now We're going to hire and we have several approved by Northwell Health, which has a huge lab facility and testing capacity.

New York Presbyterian Memorial Sloan Kettering University of Rochester Medical Center Rossville Park and SUNY Upstate Medical University, we will contract with them to test many of them. I have automated testing available, but at this time the CDC does not allow automated testing, so my position with the CDC is good. It's one thing that they don't do anything to help us, but at least they don't handcuff us and that's where we are now. The next hurdle we need to overcome with the CDC is getting them to allow us to do automated testing. If we bring in these labs, we get automated testing, we increase our testing capacity exponentially and that's critical to what we're talking about at this particular time.

In this evolving situation, I have officially declared an emergency declaration that gives us certain powers, we are going to purchase and hire more staff, especially to help local housing authorities and local health departments that are very stressed, you know, we have said. to the local health department you have to follow up on the quarantine mandatory quarantine someone has to knock on the door once a day at random intervals I have to make sure the person is there even in the voluntary quarantine we want electronic controls at the control This requires a lot of manpower, so we need the staff, we need the purchases under the emergency declaration, we have a faster purchasing and testing protocol and we are going to make the last point always the most important, what are we going to do?

We're doing aggressive testing, especially in suspected populations, following the infection tree because we want to identify people because we want to put them in a position where they won't infect anyone else. We want to find positives. We are sending mixed messages. Every time we do these numbers because people say "oh, no more people have it," we say it's good news that we know who the people are, so now we can put them in an isolated situation and they won't continue to infect others. people, that's the point. The exercise my friends is to find these people so we are doing more testing, the more testing the better, the more positives you find the better because then you can isolate them and slow the spread, that has been the focus.

The real question is if you're just living your life well, then what happens if I get the

coronavirus

? That's the question, so what happens if I contract the

coronavirus

? If you contract the coronavirus, 80% of people will walk away and resolve themselves. 20% will be hospitalized. The vulnerable population. Old people. immune. compromised underlying disease, we have said that from day one all the data supports that, even taking our situation, seventy-six cases in New York, ten people are hospitalized out of the seventy-six, ten people hospitalized, more than seventy-six, that's about 15%, which is in line with what we said, about 20 percent will be sick and may require hospitalization, so that's actually what we're looking at and there's another data point from John Hopkins that's very informative. .

John Hopkins has been doing only proper tracking because the real question is what has happened to the people who contracted the corona virus? This has been going on for weeks. What happened to people who contracted the corona virus? John Hopkins is tracking just this is what they found 102 thousand cases so far around the world John Hopkins is working with the World Health Organization, etc. 102,000 cases mortality rate 34,000 cases 57,000 recoveries 41,000 sick in the last two and a half weeks listen to this there are more people who urinate they are recovering and then they are getting infected well so it's exactly what we said no the facts become yes you get the coronavirus, 80% walk around, it resolves itself, 20% get sick, maybe it's elderly people hospitalized, we have to be very careful, that's why I'm very cautious, nursing home, congregate facilities for people older, immunocompromised and of the 100,000 people who have been through this is what the numbers show so that's what happens if you get it but we still want to do everything we can to make sure you don't get it and how we do it . contain contain contain get a clue chase it get a clue chase it find the positive quarantine that's exactly what we're doing and it goes very well with those questions comments that we have we've done hundreds of tests.

I don't have more than that because look, we are also outsourcing themnow. so when you say state, just to be clear, state testing in Wodsworth is also outsourcing to these six commercial labs that we're just starting, but in total it's hundreds of thousands. I would test as many people as you can because you want to know now. Remember that these are not random sample tests, it's not like we come out and say we just want to get an idea of ​​what the random sample is among the population. There are 400 people who were at a Bar Mitzvah with several people who tested positive in all the tests. 400 this is a kid who tested positive went to a school and was in one classroom and then went to another classroom and then went to a hockey game test both classrooms and test the hockey team the more tests you do the better What are you limited by testing? capacity now the CDC was not helpful here because the CDC said I think it caused more anxiety and it's the anxiety we're dealing with now the CDC says if you want to get tested, get tested and tell your doctor you want a test and it's fine even your doctor that was the message the message reported from the CDC at the same time the vice president says oh by the way we don't have the capacity to do the tests well now you created a real problem you invited people to the house and you can't take care of them, he you told people to come get tested, all of that has to happen as your doctor approves because of the way we can't do testing, that's now reverberating and making people very nervous because we have a lot of people calling saying: I want the testing, we really can't handle that amount of testing right now and if we are not on a certain protocol for testing, we still can't contact you.

I heard the CDC said all I had to do was go and ask my doctor. I know, but actually, if you listen to the vice president, he also said. we don't have the capacity that has caused the consternation, anxiety and worse than the virus, you know, it's worse than the virus, anxiety, fear and confusion, so that was not helpful, you can't invite more people to the tests, then you have the ability. Testing sounds like common sense, right, one plus one plus one still has to equal three and that's what we're doing in New York. We have a testing prioritization protocol that adjusts to our capacity.

As our testing capacity grows, we will expand our protocols. to know who can get tested, but the protocol for who can get tested has to match the capacity, the number coming into the pipeline has to equal the number coming out of the pipeline, my message would be if you are a senior or have a compromised immune system. I would seriously consider attending a large meeting now. I told my mother that my mother is an old person, she doesn't know it or believe it or act like it, but she is. I told her she wouldn't do it.

If she goes to large gatherings, I would use hand sanitizer when she moves around town. She lives in New York City, but in terms of shutting down any meeting, if that's going to happen anywhere, it's going to happen in New Rochelle, we have a situation in New York. Rochelle, you're seeing those numbers in New Rochelle expand like you've seen in other groups around the country and one becomes 2 becomes 4 becomes 10 becomes 12 and 12 people then they go out and twelve people touch 200 and 200 touch 400 and 400 touch 800 and that's what we're dealing with now, that's where you start not having large gatherings, etc., we are closing the schools in that community, we have closed the schools, we can extend the closure of those schools today, we are expanding it to precautions with nursing homes, senior care facilities, etc., if there were large gatherings imminent, which again I just discussed with local officials, we do not have large gatherings imminent, but if there were, I think we would have to look carefully if not, we would cancel them, yes, it allows accelerated purchasing and hiring, which are the things we need now.

Well, I needed to spend the forty million dollars, forty million dollars of budget allocation, this is how you pay for what was purchased, the purchasing requirements, some of the purchasing protocols do not apply during an emergency declaration, deadlines for an RFP, etc., they are going to come back, they are not going to land, the airline does not want to land at Stewart Airport, the airline wants to land at Kennedy Airport because they have more staff. services at Kennedy Airport we said okay, the general parameter is whether they can quarantine at home. Well, if they can't quarantine at home, we will have Sunni congregate dormitories for quarantine at home.

Do we have something new there? 73 is the double participation in the plane, since it took off there are 73 students who were on the flight that is now returning only thirty million dollars in weekly expenses, how is that allocated to everything that is allocated? it will go towards hiring staff equipment rental purchases we are buying swabs we are trying to buy masks we are trying to buy protective equipment we pay for the tests you know those six private laboratories that are doing the tests we will pay for those tests the local housing authorities need funds because they are incurring overtime, etc., so it's things like that, we're still figuring that out, we have a lot of frenzy, a lot of activities and then we have an underlying reality, what is the underlying reality?

What does John Hopkins say? Yes, this is very contagious. virus and it's contagious, it spreads easily, but in the end it's okay, so what happens if I contract it? What happens if I get it today? I don't consider myself old, that's the warning. Okay, 80% self-resolving, 20% hospitalization for underlying illness if you have an underlying respiratory illness this could be very serious if you have a compromised immune system this could be very serious if you are fighting cancer or are HIV positive this could be very serious if you already have pneumonia this could be very serious otherwise you will basically have symptoms for two weeks and recover don't let them overwhelm you and look at the numbers we have the numbers look at the numbers of people the rate of people being hospitalized, right?

You take it well, Johns Hopkins doesn't. I'm not saying how many are hospitalized, but we have 76 people, 10 in hospitals, 15% hospitalization. We are now looking at telemedicine. We are studying with China. Did you know that China? China went both ways. We were caught off guard when it started. depending on who you believe, by the way, but then they turned the corner and got very aggressive in handling the issue, very aggressive with the quarantine because of the way the autopsy is China's aggressiveness with the quarantine was one of the main reasons why the situation changed. the numbers are around, but telemedicine was part of that mandatory quarantine stay at home work from home close schools close restaurants food deliveries they were very fast and aggressive in implementing the aspects of the quarantine they would say even if you look at South Korea they would say The only way to stop the spread is an aggressive containment strategy and when you look at New Rochelle, look at the increase in those numbers in New Rochelle, they are very high, since it started, it has continued to increase dramatically. had said that they beat everyone in New Rochelle, they must stay at home, they could have reduced the mandatory quarantine rate for everyone, now they see that it is easier to do in China, but it would be very detrimental to the economy, but there is no doubt that mass quarantine is the best way to slow the spread one quick thing sorry Jesse a setup on the hotline, there's actually a hotline that if New Yorkers have questions about their previous travel or any symptoms they have it's eight eight eight three six four 306 five how many testify? how many tests open how many tests open what do we think we have testing going on in Westchester is there is one test kit per person the sample is taken because the sample was taken a sample kit the sample is taken the sample is sent to the laboratory the laboratory performs the test We need the CDC.

This is a third commitment to our federal colleagues. We needed the CDC to authorize the state lab. Finally they did it. We need the CDC to authorize the state lab to contract with outside labs. Finally they did it. Now we need the CDC to authorize automated testing. which are robotic tests that exponentially increase the number of tests you can do because they are not manual, you don't have a person manually adding the agents to the test tube, etc. Well, a cruise is a little different situation. Because by definition they are isolated, they could only extend to that universe on the cruise, but we are dealing with your people who are walking through the community and someone goes to a hardware store and then they go to a restaurant and then they go to a place of business and in office in that situation where there is the potential for a person to communicate with people who were not informed and were not tired of this situation, that is really, if you ask me what this is all about in the Bottom line, what do we have?

What to worry about I have told you from day one that we have to worry about nursing homes, they have been given specific guidance, specific protocols, position, specific instructions for the staff. New Rochelle, we are going to take extra precaution, there are no outside visitors, but that's what worries me, that's what keeps me up at night, we can get it for you and believe me, nursing homes are very aware of this, you know, and we have discussed a number of things that we will say that outside visitors are not allowed. to any nursing home, you know, but that's also difficult, that means the person in a nursing home their family can't come, the children can't come, so all these things are a balance in a trade-off, thank you .