Pandemic. The director. These dayssmile much because the budget is not in , but it is a pleasure to be in rochester with so many of my great friends. Lieutenant governor bob duffy who has done so much work with me since we first got started and has done great work for the entire state of new york. Danny is a great civics leader and has been very helpful. Thank you for allowing us to do the antibody testing. We thank you for everything you have done. Lets give you an update on where we are today. The total number of hospitalizations is down. You see that curve coming down, you can see the mountain we went up and now we are on the others of the mountain. You start to see the shape of the mountain. The climb from the mountain is not as steep as the incline. The question is how fast and how low does the incline go. Decline does that happen and what is the lowest level that it will reach. For a quick up, plateau at the top, but a fast. Ecline net intubations are down. 80 a person is intubated, of the time there is not a good outcome. Most of the time its good news. The other end is how many new cases are coming in the door every day . How many new diagnoses . Declining. Is also not only are the number of ,eople in hospitals coming down but the number of new cases has declined. Statewide for a few days but this number is down at 700. I would take this with a grain of salt because this is reporting from yesterday which was a sunday. Sometimes we get different results on the weekend. This whole reporting system has just been put in place. This never happened before. This is every hospital in the state reporting every day for the first time. Its a plus or minus acrosstheboard. This is the number that haunts me every day. This number is not declining anywhere near as fast as we would like to see. 26 new yorkers who passed away. So we dont become immune, we talk about these numbers, 226 families. 226 wives or brothers or sisters or children that are suffering the loss of a loved one. We remember them in our thoughts and prayers. People are talking about reopening, which we should. This is not a sustainable situation. Close down everything. It for a you can do short period of time but not forever. Reopeningi smore difficult than the reopening is more difficult than the close down. You throw out the power switch and everything goes down. Close the businesses and stayathome. Operation. Unt , now,ou go to restart knowing what we know, you have to be more careful. Start by learning the lessons that we did learn through this smartence, and second, be about what we do. I get the emotion, i get impatience, i get the anxiety. We all feel it. It is unsustainable economically, unsustainable personally. Is allf anxiety. Hroughout our community we see it in increased Substance Abuse and increased domestic violence. This is a difficult period and people want to move on. Lets be smart and learn the lessons. One lesson is that we have never been here before and we didnt really know what was going on. The cdc released a report last the virus was coming to the east coast from europe. Everyone was looking at china for all of those months. China was last november or december. The virus migrated from china while we were staring at china and it went to europe. The strain that came to the United States came from europe. We had people in airport stopping people from testing in china. The federal government did a lot of testing. The people from europe were walking right past them. Strain came the from that was affecting this area. Thats what the cdc just learned last week. This is going back to february. One of the most studied topics ever. Learn the lessons of what happened. At this piece of information on the europe trip send you see the number of flights that came from europe at that time. Youreexplains why seeing the outbreak in chicago, why you have seen the number of cases in new york. The flights were landing here. People were coming from italy, the u. K. , european countries. Them, thought to screen nobody was on guard. In new york city and then virus just took off. We didnt know. That flew was not one wave that flu was not one wave, it was three. The second wave was worse than the first wave. Watch the other countries that went through this before us. Were not the first one down the chute. Other countries wanted to reopen also. You study those cases and yous soon that you reopen too or on intelligently and you can have an immediate backlash. Thats not speculation. That is looking at other countries and looking at what has happened around the world. Listen the experts and to what they are saying. Dr. Fauci, one of the best voices and minds on this. Dr. Fauci has been through this in different iterations. He was one of the pioneers on the hiv virus and aids. He says we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter. Hes not sure. Theall of this in equation. And actualize tha that nobodyis knows what happens next and whe n. How can that be that nobody knows . Sophisticated, we have so much intelligence, so many experts. This is the United States of america. How can it be that no one knows . Because no one knows. I speak to the best experts globally and nobody can tell you for sure. We expect experts and them to know so we push them to know. Tell me when. Sometimes the answer is, i dont know. Sometimes thats the honest answer. I was talking to my daughters last night and they said, you say at your briefings i dont know. How can you say that . Im not sure that they really watch my briefings, but they are right. Sometimes i say i dont know, because i dont know. If you dont know, say that you dont know. I speak again to the best minds around the country and they dont know. If you dont know, say that you dont know. It doesnt mean youre not smart. When you know what you dont know and admit it, it will keep you safe. Know what you dont know. Because you can prepare for different possibilities. We dont know but we will be prepared for all possibilities. Reopening, chart a course with the best information you have come out learning from the lessons you have, but be able to correct that course depending on what happens. Which means dont act emotionally, because i feel this, because i feel that, because someone said other states are opening so you might be able to open forget the anecdotal, forget the atmospheric, forget the environmental, forget the emotional, look at the data, look at the measurements, look at the science and follow the facts. Instinct, this is look at the data, look at the science, look at the metrics. Move forward measuring what you and be what you know prepared to adjust. Intelligently, based on the metrics, and we will see what happens and we will adjust to whatever happens. And we haveure this to. Percentage on the rate of hospitalizations which we have, that is the chart that goes up and down. Watch that hospitalization rate, do year diagnostic testing do your diagnostic testing. You can watch that rate go up or down or flat. Then reducing the infection spread by isolating the positives. Willu do those things, you control the rate of transmission of the virus, which is everything. Nobody says you are going to eliminate the virus in the shortterm. Nobody. But you can control the rate of transmission. You can control the rate of transmission from becoming an outbreak or an epidemic or overwhelming your Public Health system. Transmissionate of , 1. 1 or less. Affects 1. 1 person other people. If you are doing that it is an outbreak and it will increase x financial he and be out of control. As long as the rate of transmission is manageable an your, then reopen businesses. Reopen them in phases so that you are increasing that activity level while watching the rate of transmission. The rate of Trans Mission goes up, sotp the reopening stop the reopening. Close the valve. Reopen the businesses in phases and watch the rate of transmission. Stop everything immediately. They started to reopen. Againame an outbreak and they had to slow down. Rather than starting and stopping you had to have a controlled start so that you dont have to stop. That is what you learn from the other countries, reopen too fast and you have to stop. How does that happen . Its not going to happen statewide. Rather than wait for the whole state to be ready, reopen on a regional basis. If upstate has to wait for the downstate to be ready, we will be waiting a long time. Analyze the situation on a regional basis. Region, the number of infections, your health care capacity. If the infections go too high, you can overrun your Health System and now you are italy because your hostile Hospital System cannot handle it. Diagnostic testing and do the Contact Tracing and have that system in place so that when you test and find the positive you trace the contacts from the positive person and you are isolating them to bring down the rate, and you do that on a regional basis. That system has to be in place for a regional basis. When can i start reopening . Look at the guidelines from the cdc which is a region showing 14 days in decline in total hospitalizations and deaths on a three day rolling average. Take a three day average and you have to have 14 days of decline. You cannot have more than 15 total cases or five or more deaths on a three day rolling average. You that you are basically at a plateau level that you can actually start to reopen. Then you are watching the rate of infection and the spread of the infection. Is fewermark there than two Covid Patients per 100,000 residents. Your population to account for the variance in the different sizes across the state. Then anticipate and protect yourself from more possibilities, but what if we have a surge again . Never feel your hospitals to more than 70 capacity. Leave 30 in case you have a surge. The virus is tricky. Todayon who gets infected shows up in the hospital 10 days from today or two weeks from today. Up, youction rate goes dont feel it for two weeks. You want to make sure that you hospital bedse available and case you have that surge. Every hospital has to have 90 days of ppe for that hospital. We cannot have another mad scramble where nurses and doctors do not have gowns and masks because the hospitals dont have the necessary stockpile. Testing, we have done really remarkable work. One million new yorkers have been tested. The cdc and Coronavirus Task force for the white house recommends that for a region to reopen you have 30 tests for every 1000 residents ready to go. Do we needg capacity for a region to reopen . You have to be prepared to do 30 tests for every 1000 residents. New york is doing more tests than any country in the state by far. Testsrk is doing more than any country on the globe per capita. We are way ahead in testing. That region has to have a Testing Capacity of 30 per 1000. The National Guard has done a great job of putting together testing kits and distributing testing kits but we have to have those tests and we have to have what they call contact tracers in place and mayor bloomberg has been very helpful, the former mayor of new york city in putting together this tracing system. This has never existed before on this scale. Literally people who trace contacts from a person who is positive. Who did you have dinner with last night or two nights ago . Who might you have been in contact with . And then contacting those people to say do you have symptoms, and if you do you should know that you were with john smith and john smith tested positive. He said he went to dinner with you and you should be on alert done inhas never been this state or in this country. Once that is done, then you talk about reopening businesses. Which do we open first . You open the businesses that are most essential and that pose the most risk. Phase one we are talking about construction, manufacturing and select retail with curbside pickup, they are the most essential with the most risk. Second phase, professional services, retail, third phase restaurant and Food Services and arts,odation, fourth, entertainment, recreation, education. Is not yournsity friend, large gatherings are not your friend. That is where it tends to spread and that is why the situations would be down at the end. And we need businesses to also reimagine how they will do business and to get ready to protect their workforce, to change their physical environment to the extent that they need to and change their to make sure people can remain at a safe environment. Business is coming up with ways to reconfigure their workplace and their processes to make this work. The government can say that these are the standards but a business will have to figure out how to do that. When you look at the state, there are some regions right now that pose a lower risk. We can tell you by region right now of those criteria that we went through and which are in place for which region. Which have the right hospitalization, the right testing regimen, the right Contact Tracing regimen, and which still have work to do in those areas. Region. L be region by each region has to put together the leaders in those respective areas who put together this system and monitor this system on a daily basis. They are getting all of that input, all of those specifics and all of that data, and day by day they are making a decision as to how to proceed with reopening based on the data. Based on the facts. That will be different for every region in the state. May 15 is when the statewide it was stop all businesses, stay at home. That expires may 15. Regions can start to reopen and do their own analysis, but these are the facts that they have to have in place. Now, dont coming up on may 15 and say the pause order expired and i went to open, because i will ask you the ,uestions that i just presented do you have health care in place, is your Health System ready. Do you have testing in place and tracing in place. Weeks butcouple of this is what local leaders, this is what a community has to deal with to reopen safely and intelligently in my opinion. Want to get out of the house we are going. Lets be smart, lets be intelligent and learn from the past and do it based on facts. Government is fundamentally in a different position than it was just a couple months ago. This is real now. Its not about optics or s orbrity or press release what i put on instagram yesterday. Government leader performance, expertise, this is a situation where there where confidence and their ability can be the difference between life and death, and what the government has done in this state has literally saved lives. Of the projected hospitalization rates 100,000ally by about new yorkers. 100 thousand fewer new yorkers were hospitalized then they predicted. Had 100,000 more people in our Hospital System. First of all the system would have collapsed if the projections were true. We literally saved lives. How many of them wouldve been hospitalized and would have died . We have done great work at tremendous cost and tremendous hardship, but we have done great work. Vigilantave to remain and smart and competent going forward, and that is when new york tough means. It means we are tough, but we are smart, unified and we are loving. It is the love of community and respect for each other that has got us through this and will continue to. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Thank you for the social distancing. Questions for myself or my colleagues . That is it is it time you should tell the police to start ticketing people for not Wearing Masks outside . I believe that this honestme for straightforward talk. I said that i think it is disrespectful of people not to wear masks. You see these commercials on tv, thank you to our heroes, thank you to the nurses and the doctors, to the transit workers commit to the police officers, and we should be thankful. They went to work so all of us could be safe and stay home. The least gratitude that you can least wear the mask so that you dont infect more people who place more of a burden on the hospitals and the nurses and the doctors who we are all saying thank you to for their great service. Want to say thank you, respect their jobs and wear the mask so you dont infect people. I dont want to wear a mask. Its not that big a deal. You dont wear a mask to protect yourself, you wear a mask to protect me. I wear a mask to protect you. We owe each other a certain amount of reasonableness and respect and iou that level of respect. That level ofyou respect. Local governments have the ability to enforce and to penalize, that is up to the local government. Do i think local government should be enforcing it . Yes. Because it is a Public Health emergency. This is not just do me a favor, this is a Public Health emergency, and it is a statewide order that i put in place that i am proud of, and local governments have the responsibility to enforce it, and part of their legal right is they can have a penalty or a sanction the fate impose. Rochester can have a penalty, appropriate to the community. But i think local government should enforce it and i think it should be a penalty because you can literally kill someone because you didnt want to wear a mask. How cruel and irresponsible would that be . Do you wear a mask when you are not here . Gov. Cuomo yes. All theaid wear a mask time. If you may be in a situation where you cannot socially distance. Go for a walk in the woods, you dont have to wear a mask. Come to a point from your walk in the woods where you are going to be in a parking lot where there is an entrance at an exit that you may run into other mask wear the he mask. You can have it down when you are walking in the woods and you see someone coming the other way , im going to pass the other person, put the mask on. Do. S the least that we can everyone is killing themselves. People are working 24 hours a day. Show some respect. Basic modicum of respect [inaudible] gov. Cuomo putting all of these new systems in place is an incredible task. In society we have the temptation to blame. Who is to blame . Nobody is to blame that we dont have Testing Capacity for millions of americans. We have never done this before. The fsting system was for othert or strep or some blood test. We never had a testing system in this nation that could do this volume. The whole thing is a scramble and it was a scramble between the federal government and state. I had a good meeting with the president where we sat down and said the states control the labs , we regulate them. Government federal to help where they can. Chain issue of reagents, manufacturing, that is an International Supply chain. So much of this comes from china, it is incredible. Reagents, the chemicals and the ppe. Government has assumed the responsibility of that International Supply chain. The states take over at the state line, but that supply has increased and we are distributing it, and as you saw, we are doing more testing than any other country per capita, we are coming online very quickly, but we still have more to do. [inaudible] gov. Cuomo they are going to get guidance on the plan they need to reopen schools which is basically the analog to what a business needs. I want to reopen my manufacturing company. How do you do it and keep people six feet apart. How do you do it in the transport . In do you run your business a way that will meet the social distancing guidelines . School was issue for the gatherings in the school. How 25 students in a class, do you put them in the class if they are six feet apart. Need apeople you tremendous sized room. How do you do that in the school. How do you serve lunch, what do you do about the bus, how do you keep fewer students on the bus. Reopeningo be in the plans, but it is easier said than done. The problem is the gathering. A school is a gathering. That is what it is. [inaudible] gov. Cuomo i get the whole liberate movement. Closing no reason for a of anything, open everything up and let everybody do whatever they want to do. I am that argument, sympathetic to it. Out but i also know the facts of what has happened to the places that have done that. All of those countries that saw a spike in the number of cases right afterward. Saw a spike in the infection rate, spike and the hospitalization, a spike in the number of deaths. I would like to see as few new yorkers passed away as possible. Onple want to get out, but the other hand we want to do it in a responsible way. [inaudible] us. Cuomo 80 to 90 of have not had the coronavirus. Some people say this is like a flu muck its not like a flu. 90 of us dont get the flu. This is a different beast we are dealing with. You dont hear anyone saying anymore that this is like the flu. That was in january or february, before we had 18,000 people in the hospitals in new york. One more . [inaudible] gov. Cuomo this is a national problem. We have unemployment systems, states run the unemployment systems. Was setployment system up with phone operators and websites to handle thousands of calls. We now have millions of input. It is overwhelmed every state, i talked to all the governors on these conference calls, they are all struggling to deal with a which unemployment include new signups that brought more people to the websites. Over 3000 people to run our unemployment service, our website and to handle the telephone. Incredible which is just for the unemployment line. We have made great progress but there is for some people a delay because you do have to document and certify that the person is eligible. Saysend him a check and federal law and common sense requires that you can affirm certain information. Even if there is a delay on the website, it doesnt cost you any money when you get the check. The check is from the date of your eligibility. Derosa has been seeing this and has an update on the unemployment side. People on the call, what we have found is that a lot of people in pending status have not gone on and certified their unemployment status. You file the application and do the phone call but then you have to go to the website and certify you are unemployed and that is something that you have to do every week by saturday. Are two separate numbers. You have to do that every single week and certify that you are still unemployed and eligible to work. We sent out 90,000 emails over the weekend to the batch of people who were stuck in the pending status because of that and commissioner riordan will be doing a more detailed call. That is the number one thing i. Ould recommend to those to punctuate one more thing that the governor said about the flu is that the flu has a vaccine. For people still making that comparison, i would like you to consider that. Gov. Cuomo on the coronavirus, you dont know what percent will get it. Nobody does. That say that it is true the overwhelming number of people who get it dont die. Thats fine, and less you are the person who dies, then it is not so fine. [inaudible] gov. Cuomo the Nursing Homes have in many ways been the most intense issue here. When you think about where it started, it started in a nursing home in the state of washington. Vulnerable population, people with comorbidities and been nursing home is an aggregation of those people. Thatis how it started and is where it is most dangerous in the Nursing Homes. I understand that the nursing been doing ave fantastic job, because it really is very difficult. We have put some precautions and play that are so harsh. No visitors to a nursing home this entire time. Is one personkes to walk into that nursing home with the virus and then you are off to the races. The Nursing Homes are working very hard. We have also announced an investigation to make sure the Nursing Homes are doing what they need to do. Many of them are privately run but the state can regulate them. Premise ofe basic the nursing home. They can only accept or keep a provideif they can. Dequate care for that patient if they have a covid patient or patient, but they cannot provide adequate care for that person, it is there obligation to transfer the person. If they cant find one it is their obligation to call the state department of health and the state department of health will transfer the person. Have facilities for covid nursing home residents. Some facilities that are just homeovid positive nursing residents. We have those facilities available. If the nursing home cannot care , the covid Resident Department of health will transfer the patient, period. On that responsibility is the nursing home. They have to know who they can care for and who they cant. If they cannot care for them for any reason, staff is out sick, dont have the ppe, cannot selfquarantine or isolate whatever the reason, they have an obligation to call the state department of health to say i have to transfer this person, and we have existing facilities , but thefor them nursing home has to make that determination. Caring for people or have people they are not suited therefore, they are violating the state policy, and that is with this investigation is going to look at. I said this once before and i will say it again, if you cannot provide adequate care, that person has no business being in your nursing home. And we do have facilities and we do have beds that can care for nursing home residents well and safely. We are talking about what local officials have to do to be ready, a possible reopening, if you are ready, this is how. Lessons, but this is a situation where government is first and foremost in a makeion where they have to decisions and perform and confidence matters and professionalism matters, and we will hold government officials accountable. On the vaccines being developed to combat the virus. Oin the conversation tonight go near and give their attention. Where the court is now sitting. For the first time in history, here the u. S. Supreme court live this month. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the justices are hearing oral arguments in cases before the court by teleconference. Cspan will provide live coverage of each of these sessions. On tuesday, the justices here thecase of usaid fversus alliance for open Society Incorporated about a law that prohibits some federal assistance from fighting hiv and aids internationally. Then on wednesday the justices cases, trump versus pennsylvania, consolidated oral argument on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care acts Birth Control administration. And the First Amendment case on banning automated calls for cell phones in order to collect debt on behalf of the United States. And listen totory the Supreme Court oral arguments as they are heard by the justices. On the free listen cspan radio app. Following the Supreme Courts session, join Jeffrey Rosen leading a live escutcheon with scholars. Live discussion with scholars. The impacten that the virus has had on recruitment, training and personal safety. Hosted by the brookings institution, this is an hour. Good morni,