Governor cuomo good morning. Pleasure to be with all of you. Pleasure to be back on long island to introduce the participants we have here today. On my farleft, dr. Jim from empire state college. To my immediate left, michael yearsg, who worked for 12 with governor mario cuomo, the best governor to serve in the history of the state of new york. Years with mario quam a mario cuomo is a long 12 years. When you worked with my father, those were dog years, 12 years, and michael basically ran the Health Care System for the state of new york and develop the Health Care System during that time. Northwell Health System, the largest hospital system, Health System in the he will be extraordinarily helpful here in dealing with this virus and more helpful as we go forward to. So i pleasure to be with him. To my left, secretary derosa. And to her right, dr. Howard zuker, the commissioner of health, who has been doing a great job. A pleasure to be here today. One of the most challenging times that this state has faced in modern history. At challenging time all across the nation. Ofot of questions, a lot anxiety, a lot of opinions out there. Everybody has an opinion. Everybody, you watch the news, talk to people, everyone has an opinion on what we should be doing. Everyone has thoughts they want to share. One of the things that makes it frustrating for my team, i say im interested in your opinion, im interested in your thoughts, but lets start with facts first, right, and then once we agree on facts, then we can get to opinions and thoughts and beliefs. But lets start with facts. And thats what ive been doing for the people of the state of new york. That me give you facts. Our total hospitalization rate is down again. You see this curve. We talked about it on the way up, which was a painful journey. Apex thatout the turned into more of a plateau, a flattening. Now we are seeing it gradually decline. We would have liked to have seen a steeper, faster decline, but this is where we are, a painfully slow decline, but its better than the numbers going the other way. You see total hospitalizations, you see it on intubations, and you see it also in the number of new cases today. This is important because while we are sing the hospitalization rate go down and you see the number of new faces new cases going down, the number of new cases is still problematic. 600 new cases yesterday. With everything we have done, still 600 new cases yesterday. Either walking in the door to hospitals or people in hospitals who are then diagnosed with covid. But that number is also going down. One of the most stubborn situations and the most distressing are the number of deaths. And that is down from where we were, but it was still 232 yesterday, which is an unimaginable and painful reality that we have to deal with. And when people talk about how good things are going and the decline in the progress, thats all true. People wereue 232 lost yesterday and that is 232 families that are suffering today. Also a caution in the number of deaths. Andow the reporters Everyone Wants to trace these numbers and document these numbers. I think we are going to find when all is said and done that the numbers are much different than we actually thought they were. The amount of information that is now coming out that changes what we believed or what we were told happens almost on a daily basis. This was a virus that started in china. Says, it week the cdc didnt come from china. It actually came from europe through the east coast. That is how it got to new york and chicago, etc. That by the time we turned off travel from china, the travel ban, the virus was already gone and it was in europe, and then he came here from europe. We didnt know at the time, so february, march, flights were landing from italy, from the u. K. , etc. , bringing the virus. We didnt know. They are now saying the virus may not have come just in february, march. The virus may have come late last year. They are doing testing in chicago now on people who passed last november and december to see if they passed from the covid virus. So i think this is all going to change over time. So a note of caution. And i think its going to be worse when the final numbers are tallied. We are also not fully documenting all the athome deaths that may be attributable to covid. So i think the reality is going to be actually worse. But there is no doubt its a time of unprecedented anxiety, stress. People want answers, they want answers now. Havent had a paycheck, dont know where their job is, dont know if they are going back to work, where they are going back to work, when they are going back to work, and they want answers now. I understand that fully. Answers,e we look for lets make sure we are all understanding the same question, right . , dothe question here is not we open or reopen society, when we reopen . We have to reopen society. Its like asking when do you start breathing. You have to breathe, right . The economy must function. People need incomes. The economy has to work, the state needs revenue. People have their lives, get out of the house come have to be able to see friends, see family. So its not a question of do we reopen. It is a question of how we reopen. That is really the question we have to grapple with and that we are dealing with in new york. Our position in new yorkanswer e reopen is by following facts and data, as opposed to emotion and politics. Right . Everyone has emotion. I want to go back to work today. I want to see my family today. I want to go to the bar and socialize with my friends today. I do, by the way. Emotion. Not about its not about political position on reopening. Its not a democratic position, republican position. There is no politics to this. Deal with facts and deal with data. You,se that to instruct even more important at a time of high emotion. Understand the emotion, appreciate the emotion, but deal in the facts and data. And you have it. Number calibrate by the of hospitalizations, the infection rate, the number of deaths, the percentage of Hospital Capacity, the percentage you are finding on Antibody Tests, the percentage found on diagnostic tests, positive and negative. You are collecting, tracing data. Ache your decisions based on the information and the data. That is what we are saying in new york. That actually works. And by the way, we know it works. When you look there is a chart today you look at what is happening in new york, ine is going down, the number of cases is going down. We have turned the corner and we are on the decline. You take new york out of the national numbers, the numbers for the rest of the nation are going up. They are going up. To me, that vindicates what we are doing here in new york, which says follow the science. Follow the data. Put the politics aside and the emotions aside. Showse are doing here results. Hospitalization rate is down, the number of deaths is down, and the number of new cases is down. And the number of new cases is down. I have been focusing on the number of new cases. Thats where our Health Professionals are focused. With everything we have done, close schools, close businesses, everybody shelter at home, all of the precautions about wearing a mask and gloves, etc. , you still have 600 new cases that walked in the door yesterday. A week before that, we some 1000 new cases every day. Where are those new cases still coming from . Because we have done everything we can to close down. How are you still generating 600 new cases every day . Where are they coming from . Lets look at the facts and data, lets understand and see what we can do. We have done over the past few days is we asked hospitals to look at the new cases coming in. Yesterday, 600 new cases. Where are those people coming from . What can we learn from those people to further target and refine our strategy . When you look at where they are coming from, they are primarily coming from downstate new york, which is not surprising. Basically equally distributed. Long island is 18 . That is a number that jumps out at you. Rockland, westchester, that is down to 11 . When you look at the racial breakdown of who is getting hospitalized, it is disproportionately minorities, africanamerican and latino. Again, in downstate new york. 62 48. R percentage male, the virus doesnt discriminate generally. And a very High Percentage of comorbidities, which is what we have been talking about and what we understand. It is not a surprise. This is a surprise. Overwhelmingly, the people were at home, where there has been a lot of speculation about this, a lot of people had opinions, a lot of people arguing where they come from and where we should be focusing. 18 of people, came from nursing homes, less than 1 from jail or prison, 2 from the Homeless Population, 2 from other concrete facilities. But 66 of the people were at home, which is shocking to us. Disproportionately older. By the way, older starts at 51 years old. Im a little sensitive on this point. But if older starts at 51 years a large numbers state,ld folks in this in this country. That whole vulnerable population being old, old is now 51 and up. So think about that. 70, 20 . 70 to 80, 19 . But 51 years old is old, ok. And i am very old. Method, weion thought maybe they were taking public transportation. We have taken special precautions on public transportation, but no, because these people were at home. 2 with car services, 9 driving their own vehicle. Only 4 were taking public transportation. 84 were at home. Were they working . No. They were retired or unemployed. Only 17 working. Are not working, not traveling, predominately downstate, predominantly minority, older, predominantly nonessential employees. Thats important. We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work. That these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. Thats not the case. They were predominantly at home. Justis only three days, about 100 hospitals. 1000 people. It reinforces what we have been saying, which is much of this comes down to what you do to protect yourself. Everything is closed down, government has done everything it could, society has done everything it could, now its up to you. Are you wearing a mask, doing the Hand Sanitizer . If you have younger people visiting you, may be out there and maybe less diligent with social distancing, are you staying away from older people, older starting at 51, by the way . It comes down to personal behavior. This is not a group that we can target with this information. It is really about personal behavior. Another issue we are looking at is what is happening in these hotspots, clusters, that you see popping up. It is happening across the country in meat plants, where you have a significant number of people getting infected. There is now a meat shortage in the nation. We have a hotspot in new york, upstate new york, and it is around an agricultural business. But it is not a Meat Processing plant, it is actually a greenhouse farm. And we have dozens of cases coming from the employees in this situation. What does that tell you . It is not really about meat or vegetables, there is nothing about the fact that it was a Meat Processing plant, because we have a Vegetable Processing plant. It is about worker density and large gatherings. That is the caution flag. That has been the message. It is not about poultry, meat, or vegetables. It is when you run a facility with a large number of workers in a dense environment. We learned that already in new york, when we had the new rochelle hotspot, which was the first hotspot in the nation, new rochelle westchester. The lesson was one or two people infected who had large gatherings or a dense gathering. That virus just takes off on you. And we learned that in a new rochelle, we are learning it again in Meat Processing plants and poultry Processing Plant across the nation, and we just went through it again, and we are going through it in madison and oneida county. That is something we have to watch and keep in mind. At the same time that we are going through this reopening exercise,i want to make sure we dont miss the opportunity in the moment. All arertunity is we going through this, lets learn the lessons and keep this moment in history to actually improve from where we are and build a background. I want to set the bar high and set the goal of not just everybodywhat we did, go back to where we were, i dont want to say that we spent all of this time, all of this pain, all of this suffering, all of these deaths, only to go back to where we were. Go back to a better place. How do you find a Silver Lining in this viral storm . And actually improve your situation . Island, we went through superstorm sandy, it was her. Thousands displaced. We learned and we built back better. Long island is better for having gone through hurricane sandy. How can you say that . Because it is a fact. We learned, we improved from a horrendous situation. How do we do that here that is part of what we want to do. People talk about making changes in society. Change is very hard to make. Change is hard in your own personal life. How many new years resolutions did we make as a society that are still in effect in may . I was supposed to lose five pounds, i was supposed to be running every day, forget it. One week. Maybe 10 days. Show thaty does people are ready for change at certain moments. And i believe this is one of those moments, like superstorm sandy, 9 11, after National Disasters around the country, where people say i get it and im ready to make changes. And thats what we want to do. Thats when we talk about it not just being a reopening, its about rebuilding, reimagining, and moving the state forward at this moment. And we want to do that. How do we come up with a better Transportation System . How do we have more social equity, a Better Safety system, better housing, better economy, better education, better Health Care System . We need the best minds available to take this moment to put together with the best thinking that we can find to make the best improvement. One of the lessons is in Public Health and our hospital system. We worked in an impossible situation when this started. We were told we may need 130,000 hospital beds for covid. That was the initial projections. We only have 50,000 hospital beds in the state. How do you get 50,000 Hospital Capacity . 130,000 it was impossible. By the way, we dont really have a public Health System. We have separate hospitals across the state. But they dont really function never really, they worked together on a daytoday basis, they dont share patient load, ppe, and we scrambled and made it work. How do we institutionalize that . How are we ready for the next covid or the next whatever it is . How do we use telemedicine better . How do we allocate health resources, hard in the Health Care System . Lets take the lessons we just learned and institutionalize it. We have asked Michael Dowling to do that. He was a big part of the scramble we went through. In my opinion, the most innovative. How do we take that and institutionalize it . Next time Something Like this happens, we can just open a book and it says here is what we do. And we want to thank michael for his service with that. He will be working with dr. Zucker from the department of health. Another area is education. We went through Remote Learning overnight. What happens when you close the schools . Ok, we will go to Remote Learning. What is Remote Learning . We werent really short, we had read about it, we were not really prepared to do it. We then had to do it. We implemented it. The state did a phenomenal job. Gospel god bless parents who had to figure out how to use computers, technology, zoom this and zoom that. How do we really learn those lessons. We went to bill gates, he will work with us on reimagining the education system. How do you create a testing and tracing system . What is a testing and tracing system . We never did this before. We have to take thousands of covid tests, Antibody Tests, diagnostic tests, and have an army of tracers to do this. We are doing it for the first time ever. But how do we learn and institutionalize it . We have to do this with covid, but we are not going to go through this trouble and forget it. This will happen again. Some say this virus comes back in the fall or the winter, or there will be another health emergency. Michael bloomberg has generously said he would work with us and use his philanthropy to develop that testing and tracing. On a larger scale, how do we really use new technology in the economy of tomorrow . That is the lesson we are all learning. Work from home, telemedicine, teleeducation, it is all about technology and a better use of technology. And really incorporating the lessons into that. Probably the best mind in this country, if not on the globe to visionary, a true especially in the field of technology, and that is eric sch midt, former ceo of google. Future that no one else envisioned, and developed a way to get there. We have asked him to come work with us to bring that kind of visionary aspect to government and society. Lets look at what we just went through, lets anticipate our future through that lens, and tell us how we can incorporate se lessons. He has tremendous demands on his talents and time, and he has agreed to help us head an effort to do this. We are doing this, and thank you for being with us. Thank you, governor. You have been doing an incredible job for our state and the nation. And im really pleased to help. The first priorities are focused on telehealth, Remote Learning, and broadband. We can take this terrible disaster and accelerate all of those ways we are making things much better. The solutions we have to come up with have to help people most in need. People are in different situations throughout the state. We have to consider all of them and not pick one or the other. It can be inclusive and make thing better. We have to have solutions that can be presented and accelerated and use technology to make things better. My view is these moments are a chance to revisit things that are not getting enough attention, and we have systems that need to be updated and reviewed. My commitment is to make this where new york state, new out city, everyone comes stronger. The publicprivate partnerships possible with the intelligence of the new yorkers is extraordinary and needs to be unleashed. Gov. Cuomo you are the person to help us do that. We are ready, we are all in. We arenew yorkers, so aggressive and ambitious about it. And i think we get it. We went through this period and realized change is not only imminent, but it can actually be a friend if done the right way. I hope that when we look back on this time, we talk about the pain and suffering, but we also say it was a moment in time where we came together and brought a creative aspect and innovative aspect, and worked together in ways we never did before. And we made this place a better place. I cant thank you enough. Thank you very much. I look forward to continuing the conversation and working together. Thank you, governor. Gov. Cuomo that is exciting. Last point today is National Nurses day. Nobody knows better than new yorkers how our nurses really stepped up with our health care professionals. When the pressure is on in our lives, you might have seen the best and the worst in people, and heroes rise to the occasion. Thats what we saw here in new york. Our Frontline Health care workers were just extraordinary. Showing up every day, working impossible hours. A virus that nobody understood, fear of infection. Thethey just kept rising to occasion. And thehy new york nation loves all of our health care workers, and our nurses have done a phenomenal job. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts. Ideaetblue had a beautiful of a way to say thank you, which is donating roundtrip flights to 100,000 medical personnel and nurses. Isnt that beautiful . 10,000 new york medical professionals. We need him here in new york. But it is a nice way jetblue is saying thank you. And all of us will find our own way to say thank you. Im sure every new yorker joins me in saying thank you from the bottom of our heart to all of the nurses here today. God bless you and thank you for getting us through this. Thank you for being new york tough. Not just tough, smart, disciplined, and unified. God bless you. Questions . Reopening. Along the way you rubberstamp and say use common sense, like golf courses, drivein theaters, that might be a good idea, so if a Business Owner said they had a super creative way to do this, can do it immediately, talk about smarting up, do you trust that and move forward with other things . Have a verywe detailed reopening plan with very detailed steps. We look at different regions in the state, because there are different situations in different regions. New york city is different than long island, the adirondacks, buffalo new york, the numbers are dramatically different. The way we talk about in this nations states, in this state, regions are in different places. Thats how big this state is and how diverse it is. There are specific factual data points that each region has to assess. Is the infection rate going up or down . Our hospitalizations going up or down . Do you have Health Care Capacity if, god for bid, the infection rate takes off on you . Do you have the Hospital Capacity to deal with that . Do you have the icu beds to deal with that . Do you have the ppe . If yes, then in that region, working with local officials, what businesses do we reopen . And the analysis there is businesses that are most essential and pose the lowest risk should go first. Construction jobs, because construction jobs, especially Exterior Construction jobs, workers are basically socially distanced by the nature of the work and can wear masks. Getting their Construction Industry up and running again. Manufacturing. In a manufacturing setting where you can do social distancing. A cautionlants are flag, the poultry plants are a caution flag, the agriculture upstate is a caution flag. Not manufacturing where you have density, and people three feet from each other on a factory line, because thats a problem, but manufacturing where you can socially distanced. You can even go business by business. Anvein theater, where employer says this is how i will operate it, everybody gets in the car, nobody gets out. You can make those decisions. No,a doe a laundromat, we get to that point do we get to that point . Gov. Cuomo we get to that point, and you get to the steps where you go through the data. You want to make sure you have the virus on the retreat. Want to make sure you are not still seeing that virus like fire through dry grass. And we do have the virus on retreat all across the state. Different levels of retreat in different parts of the state, but it is on retreat in all parts of this state. It is dramatically different than the numbers for the nation, which is worth noting. Staged better opening where you are still on the incline. I think that is a mistake. The Homeless Population in new york city. There some responsibility for new york citys spike in Homeless Population . Gov. Cuomo we have increased funding for homeless all across the board. Local governments then decide what the best programs are for that locality. It is different in nasa, suffolk, but we have increased potentially. Ofis not just the question funding, it is how you use that funding. I have worked on the homeless issue since i was in my 20s. I ran a notforprofit, i was the largest provider for homeless families in the u. S. , then i went to the federal government and worked on homeless programs across the country. I have been in more homeless shelters, homeless programs, than probably any other elected official. Just money, you have to know what you are doing. You have to have a program that makes sense. The president ial parameters are back on, what are you doing to make sure people are able to influx andry large protect workers who still must be there . Gov. Cuomo the best we can do, you still have to run elections, i dont think it is a good idea to have people standing in line to vote. You shouldnt say to a person if you want to exercise your civic duty you have to endanger your Public Health and possibly endanger others. We have seen video of other elections held across the country. We have people waiting in line six feet apart to vote that mad six feet to vote. That made no sense to me. The sooner we can do absentee ballots and make that available for everyone and mail them out to everyone and make it easy, i think that is the best way. If we have to also have an election day where people show up on election day, my two cents is please vote by absentee ballot so you dont have to show up. But if they have to show up, they have to socially distanced, etc. When you say everyone can get absentee ballots, that doesnt mean the county board of elections are prepared. Other states have had issues ramping up to quickly and havent been able to handle the requests. Are you doing anything to make sure that elections around the state are able to handle what you are asking . Gov. Cuomo we are working with the local boards of elections. I have not heard from any board of election that says they cant send out the ballots. We told them last week they have to send out prestamped forms th at people can send right back. I havent heard any issues from any local boards of elections. We are working closely with the local county board of elections and the heads of the democratic and Republican Party to make sure everyone has confidence in how the elections are being held. There is a very real possibility certain elections will be called on election night. That is a reality people should prepare for. As you said, the hope is the majority of people will be mailing in absentee ballots. We want to make sure the county process is done right, is thorough, and people continue having faith in democracy, so that may mean certain elections are held a couple of days afterward to make sure the counts are done properly. In terms of helping support the county boards of elections, if it is something they needed supplementing with the national guard. They can step in and help if there may be issues. It is something we are focused on and continuing to talk to the county boards. Do you plan to continue this through november . Gov. Cuomo depending on what happens with the pandemic between now and november. Coast said the east strain is different than the west coast strain, and i have read the east coast strain is a lot more contagious than the west coast strain. Do you have any understanding of whether people can be reinfected in east coast or west coast region, and whether the Antibody Test is any indication of immunity . Gov. Cuomo you are now beyond my pay grade on information. I will refer the question to dr. Zucker. From what i know and what i believe i said, originally, we were told the virus came from china, and everything was stop the virus from china and travel from china. The cdc came out last week and says it didnt come from china, it went from china to europe, then from europe to new york, which is a dramatically different situation. We were sitting here in new york february and march watching china. The federal government came in and were screening everybody from china. Nobody screened people coming from europe. Now it turns out there were like 2 Million People who came from europe during that time. And they landed at jfk, newark airport, some at chicago. Thats where the flights go. Then they just mixed into society. Then you have new york, one of the most dense communities in the country, and the virus took off. Nobody said it was coming from europe. People, visitors from europe walked right through the airport. Nobody said to new yorkers be careful if you were just with somebody who came from italy, they may have a virus. Nobody said that. It was totally new. I cant speak to the east coast strain versus the west coast strain. On the antibodies, it was an initial thought that if you had the antibodies, you would be immune to another infection. I think that is now being questioned. But now you are beyond my pay rate. Andhat the cdc is doing others are looking at is the genetic fingerprinting of the virus to figure out the differences between whether those in china and from italy, and unfortunately, all of the information is not out yet about how this whether it is mutated, the difference of the viruses, and the severity of the viruses, to whether one strain would be worse than another. Regarding the antibody issue, as onegovernor said, initially with antibodies should be protected, but as we learn more about the virus every day, thats one of the things we will learn more about, the protection from when you have antibodies and what that means. Also, how long that protection would last, if one is protected from it. It is a great question, it is hard to give you an answer at this point, because there is more research to do. Gov. Cuomo they are not talking today, they think the virus may ore come last december november. So they are looking at autopsy reports to see if it should have been a cause of death last year, which to me is a wakeup call wet we think we know what know, but nobody knows. Revisionsl of the that are now going on about all of the facts that we thought we knew. Reopening, not even close to meeting the lagging behind the city on key data points. Sentyesterday, the deputy there would be software for the contract for the Contact Tracing system. What role will that play in reopening . Gov. Cuomo one of the new systems we have to develop. Everyone talks about test, trace, isolate. We have to do thousands of tests. By the way, we have already done one million tests in this state. Testinge has brought online more than any state in the country. We now do more testing per capita than any country on the globe. We have been very successful in bringing testing online. In, we have to have testing every region. Long island, new york city, upstate. Then, an army of tracers, thousands who take every positive. Who did you go to dinner with, who did you whatever then isolate those people. And you have to have facilities to isolate people who cannot be isolated. Are working with gents with regions to get that up and running. You have to have the virus on decline and find a way to monitor the virus. Countysnow about the software system. I spoke to the county executive last night. Workingone issue we are with the county on, testing and tracing. And, new people coming in the door, the concern of new infections. The data that the governor mentioned. Where are people coming from, what is their demographic information, who are they . That will allow us to say, here is a hotspot zone. This will help long island and other regions target better 20 to lower the overall infection rate. Gov. Cuomo that is what Michael Bloomberg is helping us with, putting together the tracing, testing program. It has never been done before on this scale. We have to do it now. And we have to keep it institutionalized. I dont believe this is the last time we will go through this. Overall, newof the normal, i think. We are seeing storms we have never seen before, changes in weather patterns. This is the first real Public Health emergency we have had on this scale. Believe that this is the last time we go through it. So, i think, learn the lessons and institutionalize it. I want to ask you about social distancing. Lowers have saying that income areas are having tougher times than more affluent areas tougher crackdowns than more affluent areas. Gov. Cuomo lets call it, in the city, the city is new york city, although there are many cities in the state. Social distancing is important important. The enforcement of social distancing is left up to the local governments. Obviously, it should be enforced in a nondiscriminatory, nonselective away. It is important that will socially distance. I know it is important that people socially distance. Masks are believed to be more important with Health Care Experts than they initially were. It is so easy, relatively, in the scope of things, to wear the masks. We are at northwell. Look with the people here just went through for the past two months to save lives. We are asking people to wear a mask so you dont spread the infection. Compared to what people have gone through, you dont want to wear a mask . No. That is not what we want. Wear the mask. I dont even have a goodlooking mask and i wear it. Boring,his very plain, white, ugly mask, but with this face it doesnt make a difference. Thank you very much. They say they dont have enough ppe. Governor, have you talked the reimagining of education [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] sign up today for cspans newsletter word for word, providing updates daily on the coronavirus, and important updates from congress. Sign up today. Cspan. Org connect
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