Transcripts For CNNW Coronavirus Pandemic 20200330

Saw 100,000 deaths. Fda is giving an emergency approval for the use of malaria guaranteed it will work. Johnsons and johnsons says they could have a vaccine ready for human trial by september. Well bring that press conference from Governor Cuomo. Maryland governor has issued a stayathome order for his state. Anyone coming in the state from these areas must quarantined for 4 days. New york needs help as they deal with shortages and medical equipment. Mayor bill de blasio says the federal government have come through so far but they cant stop now. This is an entirely different reality than this country has faced before. This is Battlefield Medicine and huge number of cases. Life and death decisions all the time. We need what we need to keep going. I need results constantly to be able to make sure we can save the lives that can be saved in the city. I got no new assurances. I am going to keep demanding them and i put that in marker. Sunday is dday, we need help by sunday. Hospital shifts covid thats arriving now of 1,000 extra hospital beds. A field of hospital is set to open tomorrow. The new York Police Department and First Responders are being especially hit hard right now. 13 of the Police Department force is out sick. I want to bring in our Shimon Prokupecz expecting Governor Cuomo in a moment, i may have to interrupt you. What does it mean for the efforts here . Reporter it is going to be a huge relief for doctors and nurses who are operating all across new york city, various hospitals where we keep on hearing stories with patients suffering from covid from the coronavirus and not only they are suffering from it, theyre in Critical Condition needing ventilators and all equipment that goes with ventilators. This is what the hospitals are now dealing with. So the comfort is here as well as the Javits Center are behind me. These are going to be served as relief facilities for other patients. Patients who are not suffering from the coronavirus. Those patients will be brought to the facilities like the one behind me the Javits Center and the covid. The medical teams that are working so hard to try to save a lot of lives. We keep on hearing stories, i keep on hearing stories are doctors and nurses who are dealing with so much right now of any kind of relief anyone can offer for them and the facilities and the comfort and all of that is to help to bring some relief to some of these hospitals, anderson. Shimon, i am wondering the new York Police Department as we said with the high number of people who are out sick, is there any plan for that. That increases obviously there would be concerns about order in the city and the job that ts th police have to do. There are a lot of concerns. Theyre trying to figure out internally what to do and how best to address it. There are 5,000 members of the nypd that are out sick. Thats about 13 of the Police Department. They are dealing with members of the nypd over 900 who are suffering from coronavirus. They have lost a detective, they were losing civilians. Two more civilians today we were told died as a result of coronavirus. One of the things they are doing, if there is an opportunity and there is a way to keep some of these officers and members off the street because they may have under line conditions, theyre fwoing goin allow that. Theyre telling officers and employees of the nypd, let your bosses know and well try to figure out a way to get you off the streets so you can stay home. Theyre concerned with officers and members of nypd, staffs who have under line conditions. Theyre trying to first address that and hope that perhaps they can try to some how prevent any fatalities or deaths. The issues with a lot of these officers, they live in the Community Whether within the five bureaus of new york city or long island or parts of west chester, they go home and go back to their community and many cases, thats how they are contracting the virus. It is a big problem for the nypd which is still trying to fight crime across the city and still trying to respond to people who are calling 911, Record Number of 911 calls everyday from people in the city asking for help and from the Fire Department and police officers, they are dealing with that and they are responding to those calls trying to offer the help that people here need. Keep in mind it is only going to get worse in the days to come. Yeah. It is extraordinary how empty new york city is. I bike to the Office Everyday and i mean i lived here hi entire life, i have never seen it like this. There was a School Crossing guard, an elderly man who was wearing his School Crossing guard uniform out on the street sort of directing traffic not because anybody told him to. He justi is doing momentarily. I thought one of those new york moments when people pitching into try to help. Reporter it is. Also people are trying to find something to do. Something to do with their daily lives. If they can be outside to try to help. I lived here my whole life as well. I was here through 9 11 and you know i was standing before the ship as they were pulling in. I got emotional because in so many ways it brought me back to that day of 9 11 of the way the city was. It is very different. After 9 11 you were able to go outside and able to be with people and comforted. There was a lot of uncertainty in the days following 9 11 but you were able and be with people. You cant be people now. Thats one of the most difficult parts in all of this certainly for people who live in the city. The other thing thats striking and as you say and going around the city. We are used to hearing horns honking and ambulances and people walking on the street and there is none of that. It is striking. Each day that goes by, it becomes more strange. We are in some ways it is difficult but it is the reality we are living with in this city. Shimon prokupecz. The new york governor calls the coronavirus pandemic. Home to mostly africanamericans and latino residents. Our Miguel Marquez has the exclusive report. Every corner and every wall, every inch of brooke dale hospital in brooklyn is now with those suffering from covid19. What are you looking at on a dai daily basis, how difficult is this . It is a medical war zone. Everyday i come in i see pain and despair and suffering. Reporter brooke dale had 100 confirmed cases of covid19 with nearly 80 awaiting confirmation. More than 20 people have died so far from the disease. Coronavirus is pushing the hospital to the max. We are scared, too. We are fighting for your lives and ours. We are trying to keep our heads above water and not drown. Doctors keeping the floors clean. Rising tides and uncertain of how long it will rise and unsure this coronavirus wont sicken them as they struggle to stay a step ahead. What do you need right now . We need prayers and support. We need gowns and we need gloves and masks and more vents and more medical space. We need Psychosocial Support as well. Reporter the deaths here keep oncoming while filming another victim of covid19 was moved to the hospitals temporary morgue. The hospitals regular morgue filled to capacity. Reporter how much room do you have in your morgue . Usually we have 20 plus bodies we can cover comfortably. Reporter you have gone over that. The state brought us apparatus to help keeping families and bodies in comfortable areas because we dont want bodies piling on top of each other. Reporter brooke dale needs everything. The hospital has 370 beds. They would like to add more. Many more. Two weeks ago this was the pediatric emergency room. Now it is dedicated to victims of covid19. Plastic tarps taped to the ceiling offering some protection and a bit of privacy. The intensive care unit filled to nearly capacity and sealed. Fewer doors and less traffic than usual comes and goes. This window is the only place as family members can watch their loved one as they communicate with them by cell phones. Reporter as grim as it is right now. Dr. Molette expects it will get worse. It can end at the end of the year. This is why we are begging everyone not just put that pressure on the Emergency Department but also put everybody to help us to help them by staying at home. Reporter this is months and not weeks. Yes. Not just the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. I work at two hospitals here in the bronx and south bronx. I have patients in their 30s and they are now intebated, the thing about life and death as far as coronavirus, this virus, there is no difference, it had nothing to do with age or lack of access to healthcare, it had nothing to do with see oocio economics, this virus is killing a lot of people. Reporter brooke dale can do testing onsite in their own lab. Theyre hoping get to 500 a day. We have 52 specimen in here that we are preparing to test. The hospital following guidelines on whos getting tests. Healthcare workers showing symptoms and symptomatic longte longterm. It is easy to make a mistake. Just from an extra millimeter of agent added to the machine can mess up audiotape the specimens that we have to start over. Reporter dr. Molette says she never experienced anything like this. I worry about my family and my safety and my colleagues. I worry about how the shift goings to is going to be the next time i come. I worry about a lot of things. Reporter the disease, a m r marathon that healthcare workers alone cant win or finish. It is not only to the Emergency Department would pull through. This is a responsibility for everybody in the country to help us go through. Reporter so stayathome. Exactly. Safe at home. Exactly. It is not just us that have to fight the curve but taking care of everybody. Help us help you. Reporter she says it will take everyone in this together. The worse days she fears are still ahead. Miguel marquez is joining us now. It is extraordinary to see inside that hospital. I am so glad you did and seeing all those patients in the hallways is like that everyday now. You needed anymore evidence of how bad this is and how bad it is going to get, the hallway in that hospital as sobering a message as i have ever seen. It did strike me even though i consumed everything about this and i am a news junkie. We are in the first inning and talking to that e. R. Doctor is clear it is going to be a long game. Brooke dale is one of the few hospitals serving under serve community. You know just what these doctors are going through everyday. This is early innings and i think thats one of the sober things. When you heard dr. Fauci saying he would not be surprised by 100,000 deaths to 200,000 deaths. This is going to go on for some time. It is going to go on and on and theyre running short on supplies. We were dressed in full ppe protective gear with the suits and proper white suit and the goggles and masks and double gloves. They looked at us like we were from another planet. We want that stuff. Thats the stuff we should have for this. Doctors i was talking to there, she was in a surgical gown thats made of paper. That she has to get rid of everyday. They are thousands of workers there. People who clean the floors and empty the trash cans. They help keep that hospital running as well. They need gears as well. You can see how quickly it multiples and how much gear they actually need. Miguel marquez, thank you for doing that. Be careful. I want to listen to andrew cuomo in a News Conference that he just started to hold. Let me thank them all very much for being here. We just had a great meeting. Which i will refer to in a moment. Let me wish everyone happy National Doctors day. This is a day that doctors are truly busy and truly stepping up to their oath and passion. We honor all doctors from the state of new york today. Let me also thank the people from the Javits Center. Alan steele. They have done many magnificent exhibition and transformation and they never seize to amaze me. This is something anyone could never anticipate. 2500 beds as an emergency hospital. It is a partnership between the state and the federal government zr i want top thank the federal government very much for what they have done. The army corp. Of engineers did a fantastic job and getting everything set up. It will become operational today receiving the first few patie s patients. Well run the facility and take it from there. Let me go through a couple of fact to give you an update of where we are today and well take your questions. In terms of the number of cases, you see the curves continue to go up, 71. 95. You can see the number of people tested continue to go up. This state tests more than any state in the united states. More per capita in china and south korea. Thats a good thing, we want to test and find the positives and we want to find the positives so we can isolate and stop the transmission. We tested 14,000 people yesterday. The number of cases continue to go up, 69. 84. The total number of cases is 66,000 cases. Those numbers are daunting. You see it is continuing to move across the state of new york. There is only one county now that does not have a covid case. Anyone who says the situation in new york city only situation is in a state of denial. You see the virus is moving across the state and there is no american immune from this virus. Whats happening to new york is not anomaly. There is nothing about thats a new york immune system thats any different than any americans immune system. New york is the cannery coal mine. You will see it will happen all across the country. Part of what we are doing here is serving new yorkers but we believe we are dealing with this pandemic at a level of intensity and density that no one have seen before. Hopefully well learn lessons here that we can share with people across this nation. 66,000 tested positive. 2,000 icu patients and, 4,000 patients are discharge. Thats an increase of 632. You dont focus on this line when we have this conversation. People go into the hospital and people leave the hospital. Thats important to remember. We dealt with some really deadly viruses before. Thats what this is. Most people will get sick and stay home. Thats 80 . It tends to be those people who are acutely ill, have an under line illness who have the most you see at 66,000, new jersey is next to 13,000 and california is 6,000. So we have ten times the problem that california is dealing with. 2,739 deaths in the state of new york. Total of 148,000 cases. 2,739 deaths. Thats a lot of loss and a lot of pain and a lot of tears and a lot of grieve. People across the state are feeling. 1,200 is up from 965 deaths. Yesterday what you are seeing is people who have been on ventilators for a long period of time, the longer you are on the ventilator, the less likely you will come off that ventilator. And as we have now some period of time when people first enter the hospital and first intebated. To keep it in perspective, the john hopskins numbers are still instructed. 732 deaths and 34,000 worldwide. Total hospitalize, we are looking for a pattern coming in in the data. The number goes up and the number goes down. There is no doubt that the number is still increasing. There is no doubt that race has slowed. We had a doubling of cases every two days then the doubling of three days and doubling of four days and every five days and we now have a doubling of cases every six days. While the overall number is going up. The rate of doubling is actually down. The intebation rate is way up. This chart by and large is going up. People coming into the hospital and stay for a number of days and they move on. The big picture as the situation is painfully clear now. There is no question what we are dealing with. There is no question to the consequences or no question to the grief and the loss of life. There is no question of what we must do. There is only two operations we need to perform. First, the public has to be responsible. Stayathome. When i issue a stayathome order, it would be nice if you did. It is a mandate. Stayathome. If you are a nonessential worker, stayathome. If you leave the house. You are exposing yourself to danger. If you leave the house, you are exposing others to danger. You can get infected. Go home and infect whoever thats at home. Stayathome. I know the isolation can be boring and opressive. It is better than the alternatives. Life is options, right . Stayatho stayathome. Thats the best option. If you are out, know proximity, six feet distancing. You want to stay away from places that are dense. New york city you have too many places with too much density. I dont know how many different ways to make the same point. New york city parks, we made the point there is so much density. You want to go to a park, go to the park but not in a dense area. Not in playgrounds where you are playing basketball with other people. I have said that new york city is trying to reduce the density of those playgrounds. Thus far they have not been successful. If that continues, well take a mandatory action to close down playgrounds as harsh as that sounds. It can save peoples lives. Thats mission one. Mission two, this is going to be more and more clear as we go on. The front line battle is the Healthcare System. The front line battle is in going to be hospitals across the city and state and across the nation. Thats where this battle is fought. You know where it is coming. You know where the enemy is going to attack. Theyre going to infect a large number of people. That number of people descended on the Healthcare System. The Healthcare System cant deal with that number of people you overwhelm the Healthcare System. Thats whats happening. First step was flatten the curve and keep people home. We have done everything. Second step is dont let the Hospital System get overwhelmed. The soldiers in this fight are our Healthcare Professionals. It is the doctors, nurses and the people who are working in the hospitals. It is the aids. They are the soldiers who are fighting this battle for us. In this battle the troops are Healthcare Professionals. Those are the troops who are fighting this battle for us. We need to recruit more healthcare workers. We need to share Healthcare Professionals. Within this state and within this country. As governor of new york, i am asking Healthcare Professionals across the country. If you dont have a healthcare crisis in your community please come help us in new york now. We need relief, we need relief for nurses who are working 12 hours shifts, one after the other. We need relief for doctors and we need for attendants. If you are not busy, come help us please. Well return the favor. Well return the favor. New york, yes, we have it now intensi intensi inten intensely. New york will be on one side will be on the other side of the curve then there will be an intense issue some where else in the nation. The new york way is to be helpful. Help new york, we are the ones that are hit now. Thats today. Tomorrow is going to be some where else. Whether it is detroit or new orleans, it will work its way across the country. This is the time for us to help one another. We need supplies desperately. We are working on that. We just had a good meeting where we discussed supplies. I want to thank Michael Evans from alibaba whos here with us. Elizabeth james whos here with us today, who are helping us source supplies. We are in a situation where you have 50 states all competing for supplies. The federal government is now al also competing for supplies and private hospitals are competing for supplies. We have created a situation where you literally have hundreds of entities looking to buy the same exact materials basically from the same place which is china. Ironically enough. We are fighting among ourselves, we competing among ourselves. We are driving the surpripricin. When we started buying ventilators, they were under 20,000. The ventilators are over 50,000 if you can find them. The ventilators didnt change that much in two weeks. The prices went up because we are driving the prices up. We need to give our front line, our Healthcare Professionals the supplies they need and we need to do it now. Our rule in new york has been plan forward to get ahead of the problem. The only expression is dont fight the last battle. This virus has been ahead of us from day one. We have been playing catch up from day one. Get ahead of the problem, dont fight todays fight. Plan for two weeks or four weeks from now when you are going to have the apex and make sure that we are in a position to win the battle when the battle is truly drawn which is going to be at the apex. Thats why we are preparing stockpile now. The word stockpile by definition means not for immediate use. It means you are preparing for a battle to come. And you have to have the equipment and you have to have it now. I have done Disaster Work all across the nation. I can tell you this. If you wait to prepare for the storm to hit, it is too late my friends. You have to prepare before the storm hits. And in this case, the storm is when you hit that high point when you hit that apex. How do you know when you are going to get this . You dont. There is no crystal ball. There is science and there is data and there are Health Professionals who studied this virus and its progress since china. We have months of data. Listen to the scientists. Listen to the mental health, the Healthcare Professionals and follow the data and thats what we are doing here in new york. We just had a great meeting where we brought the Healthcare System from across the state of new york together to come up with one coordinated plan. Not private hospitals and Public Hospitals and not new york City Hospitals and long island hospitals and west Chester Hospitals and upstate hospitals, not big hospitals and small hospitals. The entire Healthcare System convened, coordinated working as one for the first time in decades. No one can ever remember the way we deployed and coordinated like this. This is a statewide battle. We want to make sure that we are all coordinated and we are all working together. Thats exactly what we have accomplished at this meeting. No politics, no partisanship, no division. There is no time for that. Not in this state and not in this nation. This is a deadly serious situation. Frankly it is more important than politics. It is more important than partisanship. If there is a vision at this time the virus will defeat us. If there was any moment for unity, this my friends is the moment. In many situation, there is no red states or blue states and there are no red casualties and no blue casualties. It is red, white and blue. This virus does not discriminate. It attacks everyone and everywhere. The president said this a war. This is a war. I agree with that. Then lets act that way and lets act that way now. Lets show a commonality and a mutuality and a unity that this country has not seen in decades. Because the lord knows we need it today more than ever before. Questions, comments . The president suggested that ppe equipment may be going out the back door. First, there is a warehouse and thats in new jersey. It is the new york citys warehouse. We are creating a stockpile. For someone to say well, the warehouse has equipment in it, you should be using that equipment today. That defies the basic concept of planning and the basic operation that we have to have working and not just in the state but of course the country. If you are not preparing for a apex and high point, you are missing the entire point of the operation. It is a fundamental blunder to only prepare for it today. Thats why in some ways we are where we are. We have been behind this virus from day one. You have the scientists and data projection showing you the curve. Prepare for the high point of the curve and do it now. When are you going to do it . The night before . What am i going to tell the hopes wh hospitals when they had an influx of 50 more people and we need more equipment and ventilators. Sorry . Those stockpile concepts is to prepared in the future. The ppe equipment is not going to a correct place, i dont know what that means. I dont know what hes trying to say. If he wants to make an accusation then let him make an accusation. I dont know what hes trying to say by inference. We just had a conversation about exactly that. In new york city theyre basically two systems. There is whats the great of new york, ken gretzky represents it. It is the private voluntary hospital. Columbia and etc. Then there is the health and Hospitals Corporation which are the Public Hospitals. We have those two systems. We just discussed that. Those two systems have to in this situation under take a balancing that they probably never had todd do before. You had 11 Public Hospitals. One hospital starts to get over run, there is a highlow in one hospital. Before that happens, transfer people to one of the hospitals that has more vacancies. Distribute the load among those Public Hospitals and do it immediately and do it on a daily bas basis. One hospital starting to overload, distribute and transfer. Same thing with new york. One system is at near capacity then the two systems will Work Together to share the load. We just discussed that and we all agreed todd do it. There are no legal barriers. If a hospital stays with the public system because i think the public system is going to face the greatest stress. If a Public Hospital starts to get overloaded, transfer to another hospital with less of a load. I dont believe any restrictions. Ken gretzky is the expert on this. Thank you, governor. We are going to work with one cohesive family system. New york is on the city itself as well as west chester and i think what we are going to see is that balancing that the governor is talking about. Balance within the system and balance without the system, beyond it as we go forward and as we encounter more and more stress. Each day that goes on the stress point will increase and as a result that balancing is absolutely essential and because the leadership of the governor, it is clear to everybody that we are going to be one cohesive family. We just spent a couple of hours doing it and it is complicated. Let me gi yve you the top line. Hospitals system operate as different systems. They all have their own trade associations and public and public and the privates. We have to work as one system. So share staffs, share resources. If one hospital does not have enough masks rather than that hospital have to scramble, let the other hospitals help. More mutual, kens word is a good one. A healthcare family as oppose to these state operations and we work that through. To add on top of the states system. You have javits and this facility of 2500 beds and the ship that the president sent, 1,000 beds. These comfort beds are beds. I ask them to make the facility covid facilities, to handle noncovid. Which means their function will be an over flow valve for existing hospitals. They cant take Covid Patients but they can take nonCovid Patients. When we talk about hospitals being in near capacity, they can download if you will to javits and the comfort. [ inaudible question ] have you known a time in the 20 years that i am not willing to tangle. I understand what the president says i thank the president because i take his comment as a compliment. The president commented on a poll that said people were pleased with my leadership. And i thank him for that. That was a compliment. As far as the president s comment about having a political contest with me, i am not eng e engaging the president in politics. My only goal is to engage the president in partnership. This is no time for politics. You know lead my example. I am not going to get into a political dispute with the president. I am not going to rise to the debate of a political challenge. I am not running for president. I was never president. I said from day one i was not running for president and i ami. I just want partnership to deal i said to the president quite clearly, look, when you do good things for my state and you are a good partner, i will be the first partner to say you are a good partner and i have. I went to the ship comfort today and i said thank you mr. President. We opened up this Javits Center, i said thank you to the army. When you help my state, i will say thank you. If i believe new yorkers are not being served, the federal legislation that they passed, i will say that too. Sometimes it is simple. Just tell the truth, right . And thats where we are. Tell the truth. If you are doing the right thing by new york, i will say it. If hes doing the wrong thing by new york or the rest of the country, i will say it. But, i am not going to engage in politics. Not that i am unwilling to tangle because i think it is inappropriate. It is counter productive and i think it is antiamerican. Forget the we have a national crisis. We are at war. There is no politics. There is no red and blue. It is red, white, and blue. Lets get over it and again lead by example. We have said that no one can get evicted for nonpayment of rent. That to me is the fundamental answer that solves all the above. You cant pay the rent and there is no work and you cant pay rent. Landlord have the right to say evicted. By executive orders there is no evictio evictions. You cant be evicted for three months, period. They want to pay, they can pay. Yes. Again, our policy answers it, you cant be evicted for nonpayment of rent. It is not your rent is due one time because you signed a contract. They have expenses. No evictions for nonpayment of rent and well see how long this goes on. Yes, sir. [ inaudible of question ] we spoke about that today. Elmhurst hospital is a publicity. It is one of the new citys Public Hospitals. It is struggling. Thats clear to everyone. We spoke about it directly in this meeting and i have asked other hospitals to pitch in and help elmhurst and they have agreed. And also anticipate other Public Hospitals that may struggle as the numbers continue to increase and be ready to help them also. You know, 100,000 to 200,000 of death toll. We dont have projections in this state as to numbers of deaths. We are studying models which by the way have done by professional companies. I dont come up with these numbers. We are working on the bill gates foundation. And has an institute that does the projection. We are seeing how we are ready for the next battle and apex. It is 100,000, or is it 200,000 . Whatever the number is, it is going to be staggering. The number is already staggering. A human life is a human life. We have lost over 1,000 new yorkers. To me we are beyond staggering already. We have reached staggering. And the only point now is do everything you can to save every life possible. Thats what this is all. Right now, a hospital is basically an isolated entity. One hospital has its own employees, has its own logo, finances, does its own purchasing, has its staff. You can have associations of hospitals and then individual hospitals. That doesnt work in this environment. No one hospital has the resources to handle this. No one hospital can do its own procurement. No one hospital has its own staff. No one hospital can deal with the capacity. There has to be a totally different operating paradigm where all those different hospitals operate on as one system. So when i run out of masks, i can call brother ken at the other hospital and say, im out of masks, can you send me some masks, when i refill, ill send them back. We have to get to a point where i can say, i have too many people walking in the door. I cant handle it. And we are going to set a load threshold so when you get near the load threshold, you can send people to other hospitals that have a lower vacancy rate. Purchase together, use staff together, download patients together, balance the load and do it across the state. We have hospitals in upstate new york where theyre experiencing none of this. They have staff capacity, bed capacity. We need you now here in this fight and engaged. And thats a totally different concept, but thats what we did today. You want to comment . Yes, thank you, governor. To the question, what were going to do is work cohesively with the state government, department of health particularly, in putting together a command center that will receive all this information on an instantaneous basis and then begin feeding out that information and instructions as to what to do. For example, simply in d discharging patients to this huge facility that has been built by our colleagues here, this will create a way of decanting the pressure on our institutions, and that information will go to an essential place, transfers will be place and thats part of the cohesiveness were talking about. The same thing applies to supplies, ventilators, all the other stuff that goes to make a hospital work. This is going to be done and were now in the process of pulling it off in a complete basis. [ inaudible question ] yeah, its in the works right now. Well do central purchasing, central stockpile rather than anyone have their own stockpile, and then distribute by need. Well take one more all the way in the back. [ inaudible question ] the doctors are exactly right. The message is god bless you and thank you. We all applaud you. We are in awe of you. Were all inspired by you. We all wonder, skecretly, would we have the courage to really step up at a time of challenge . And they are doing it. They are doing it every day. And we are all in their debt and we respect them and we love them for what theyre doing and they should have every piece of equipment that they need to do their job. That is the least that we can do. And we are all doing everything we can to make that a reality. Thank you guys. Lets go to work. Hearing andrew cuomo speaking for 45 minutes or so talking, warning people about the road ahead, that we are not at the apex as he described it, of what is to come, at the beginning of what is to come. He reiterated the importance of staying at home. If necessary, new york city will close down its playgrounds which are still open in public parks if people are not distancing appropriately. Also talked about the need for supplies, for doctors and nurses. Said if this is a war, doctors and nurses and medical personnel, they are the soldiers in this war, the homspitals are the front lines. This is a war, act that way and do it now. The president had suggested that ppe equipment, well, sort of questioned why the numbers of requests for ppe equipment, maybe its going out the back door. The governor was asked about that. He said that new york is trying to build a stockpile. Theyre using a facility in new jersey to store some equipment. He says if you arent preparing for the apex, the high point, then youre missing the whole point of this entire operation. Discuss with dr. Peter hotez from baylor and ramoin from ucla. More than 60,000 cases in the state of new york. The rate of the cases doubling has slowed down from doubling every two days to now every six days. That is certainly positive news. Jabsolutely. Were starting to see potentially an impact on social distancing and this is very important because americans are asking, does this actually work . Theres going to be new evidence released in the next day or so impa saying there is an impact on social distancing, headed by singh. I was told about it through new york city and the data shows in some cities, where youre aggressively practicing social distancing, the number of new cases of fever which they attribute to covid 1 is actua9 is very important to know. The simple reason that if were not having an impact on social distancing and the number of cases and patients in the hospitals and icu continues to accelerate, thats the difference between a high mortality rate and low mortality rate. This with the 100,000 to 200,000 number that governor faucuomo a dr. Fauci mentioned as well. 10 , where the Hospital Systems are getting overwhelmed. New orleans, 4 to 5 getting overwhelmed and other places less so. If we can push hard on social distancing, i think we can make a huge impact in that number to say that 100,000 to 200,000 deaths is not inevitable. It does seem, just as peter was saying, that social distancing is now as important as it was two weeks ago. For people thinking this is just going to be a twoweek time period, that is simply not the case. Dr. Fauci, the White House Task force stands by his estimate. There could be 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus, and thats even with the social distancing. I want to play his comments for our viewers and have you talk about it. It would not have been a good idea to pull back at a time when you really needed to be pressing your foot on the pedal as opposed to on the brakes. Id like to avoid it, but i wouldnt be surprised if we saw 100,000 deaths. Dr. Ramoin, is that number something youre comfortable with . I think the models are as good as the information that we put into them, and right now, were basing it on what we know about social distancing, about our preparedness in the hospitals. So yes, i think this is something we could see, but i think the big point here is that we have power to change the course of this epidemic. Weve seen this in other places, this is not the first epidemic or pandemic weve fought. We should take lessons from ebola. We know if people do the right thing, if people social distance, if we prepare the hospitals well, we can reduce spread and we can reduce mortality. These are all things that we have under our control, and thats why i think that what cuomo is saying is very, very important. Stay home. Do the things that we can do. We are not powerless, and if people do what we are supposed to do and we can prepare our hospitals, give them the ppe, get the ventilators in place, we can have an impact on this. These models are not our destiny. They are our future if we do not change what were doing right now. Dr. Moin, thats one of the things that gives me hope in all of this. This is not a complete mystery. Science knows how to attack this and deal with a virus like this