We go live now to a response briefing with governor andrew cuomo. Stressful, emotional times as we know. Today is a day in the state of new york with very mixed two verybased on different pieces of information we have. I am trying to work through the mixed emotions for myself. I will present the facts. There is good news and what we are seeing. Wet we have done, and what are doing is actually working and making a difference. Actions. Ramatic new York Pause Program closed down schools and businesses, social distancing. It is working. T is flattening the curve we are seeing that, so far. Curve isthat flattening because we are flattening the curve by what we are doing. If we stop what we are doing, you will see that curve change. That curve is a function of what we do day in and day out. Right now it is flattening. The number of patients hospitalized is down. You dont just look at daytoday, you look at the threeday trend. The threeday average trend is also down. Anecdotally, individual hospitals, larger systems are reporting that some of them are releasing more people than are coming in. We are seeing the flattening of flattening of the curve. We have had more capacity in the system to absorb more people. , whichring of equipment has been one of the beautiful cooperative, generous acts among different partners has worked. If the hospitalization rate keeps decreasing the way it is stabilizeystem should over these next weeks, which will minimize the need for overflow on the system that we have built in at javits and the u. S. Ns comfort. Sign, ifa big caution we if we continue doing what were doing. Curve flattening the because we are rigorous about social distancing. If we continue doing what we are doing, we believe the curve will continue to fatten. It is not a time to get complacent. Italyer what happened in when the entire Health Care System became overrun . We have to remain diligent and disciplined. There is no doubt that we are now bending the curve, and we cant stop doing what were doing. The bad news is terrible. Highest single day death toll people. When you look at the death toll, it has been going steadily up. A new height yesterday. Deaths willf as thoseto rise hospitalized for a longer period of time pass away. The longer you are on a ventilator, the less likely you will come off the ventilator. Thisauci spoke to me about and he was 100 right. Indicator between hospitalization and test hospitalizations will drop, deaths increase because people who have been in the hospital for 1117 days pass away. That is what we are seeing. Hospitalizations drop and the death toll rises. It,derstand the science of the facts and the logic. It is still incredibly difficult to deal with. Every number is a face. Obvious been painfully to me everyday. We have lost people. Many of them frontline workers, peopleare workers doing the essential functions that we all needed for society to go on. They were putting themselves at risk, and they knew they were. People them vulnerable who this vicious predator of a virus targeted from day one. This virus attacked the vulnerable and attacked the weak. It is our job to protect the vulnerable. This is what that has always been about. Responsible. Not just for yourself, but to protect the vulnerable. Be responsible because the life you risk may not be your own. Those people walking into an emergency room every day, put themselves at peril, dont make their situation worse. Dont inject yourself or someone else so their situation becomes more dangerous. This, a perspective on 9 11, which so many of us lived through, 2753 lives lost. 6268. Risis, im going to direct all flags to be flown at half mast in honor of those we have lost to this virus. The question from everyone, my daughters, most peoples dinner tables, when will things go back to the way they were . I dont think it is about going back. Thatll think its ever about going back. The question is always about going forward. That is what we will have to deal with. It is about learning from what we have experienced and growing and moving forward. When will be return to normal . I do not think we return to normal. Smart, we achieve a new normal. The way we are understanding a new normal when it comes to the economy and the environment. We understand the new normal in terms of health and Public Health. We have to learn just a way we have been learning about the new normal in other aspects of society. We have to learn what it means Global Pandemic how small the world has gotten. In asia today, you catch a cold tomorrow. Country happens in any on the globe can get on an airplane and be here overnight. Understanding this phenomenon and having a new appreciation for it. System haslic health to be prepared, and the scale to which we need a Public Health system. Look at the way we are scrambling right now to make this work. We have to learn from that. We have also learned positive lessons. You have a new York State Court system, thank you chief judges, basically developing a virtual online core system court system that has benefits going forward. Using technology for health care, work from home, education, these are all positives. Testing capacity, which we still have to develop, that is going to be the bridge from where we are today to the new economy. A testingg to be informed transition to the new economy where people who have the antibodies, people who are negative, people who have been exposed and are now better, those are the people who can go to work. You know who those are because you can do testing. That we have developed a sense of scale in dealing with this there are also lessons to be learned, why are more africanamericans and latinos affected . The numbers in new york are not seead as the disparities we in other places, but there still are disparities. Why . Understand that but i think there is something more to it. The poorestems that people pay the highest price. Why is that . Whatever the situation. Natural disasters, hurricane katrina, the people on those rooftops were not rich white people. Why . Why is it that the poorest people pay the highest price . Lets figure it out. Lets do the work. Lets do the research. Lets learn from this moment and learn from these lessons and do it now. We are going to do more testing in minority communities not just to testing for the virus. Lets actually get research and data that can inform us as to why we are having more people in minority communities, people in certain neighborhoods, why do they have higher rates of infection . , get the morbidity underlying illness issue, but what else is at play . Or more Public Workers latino and africanamerican who dont have a choice but to go out there every day and drive the bus and drive the train and show up for work and wind up subjecting themselves to in this , whereas many people who had the option just absented themselves. They live in more dense communities, urban environments, but what is it . Lets learn from that and lets do it now . Albanyng to ask our suny chief to do it right now. Do more testing in minority communities now. More Data Research done now. Lets learn now. Department of health will be doing its along with northwell. Anare going to make additional 600 other payment to all unemployed 600 payment to all unemployed new yorkers. The federal government says they will reimburse us, but people need money now. New york will do that immediately. We are also expending the period covered by Unemployment Benefits to 39 additional 13 weeks weeks. On voting, i have seen people on television voting in other states. This is totally nonsensical. Suchless them for having diligence to their civic duty that they would stand on a line to vote, but people shouldnt have to make that choice. Order, all new yorkers can vote absentee on the june 23 primaries. Thent to say thank you to many places and people working with the state of new york. 2400ry medical donated machines technically not ventilators but they can be modified to effectively ventilate. They were brought up from florida. Thank you jet blue for doing that. I want to thank for it in, washington i want to thank oregon and Washington State for freeing up ventilators. I want to think direct care workers. The statethank workers who are showing up and doing a great job every day. Every first responder. How thankfulo know we all are for what theyre doing. I want people to remember that we are flattening that curve doubledything, we have down on diligence. We are going to start a social are youmpaign, who staying home for . Its not about staying home for yourself, it is further Vulnerable People who are in a bad place. Stay home for the Health Care Worker who is in the emergency room. You dont want them to affect in fact anyone else i am staying home for my mother. You, it isbout just about all of us. Who are you staying home for . Thank you to all the new yorkers for what they have done. We have more to do. We are by no means out of the woods. Read what you have seen in the data and the charts. That is a pure product of our actions and here. If we behave differently, you will see those numbers change. Doubled the fine on disobeying social distancing. Why . If anything, we have to get more diligent. We have more to do. We are new york tough, but tough disciplined and unified and loving. The toughest guys are tough enough to love. Fast point, our brothers and sisters our brothers and sisters in the Jewish Community celebrate passover. We wish them a happy passover. The number of incidents of antisemitism across the country , the violence they have seen even in this state that has such a large jewish population, we wish them well. Of passover i know helps me today, and i offer to others to consider. Passover says we remember the , we, we learn from the past remember the lessons of the past , we teach a new generation those lessons. But, there is a message of hope in passover. Next year in jerusalem. Land. Ear the promised next year will be better. Burn we will learn a lot and be better for it. Questions . [indiscernible] is its time to scale back some of these Grocery Stores that are open, these businesses to try to the question is, many tend to beorkers africanamerican and latino. I think that is probably right. I also believe the frontline workers have a greater exposure than most people. That is one of the things we will find when we do this research on wires the infection rate higher with the africanamerican community. The disparity we are seeing in new york is nothing like disparity you see in other parts of the country. It is something we have to understand. I dont think we can reduce the essential services. We are down to basically food, pharmacy, basic transportation which, frankly, is more for essential workers. Have publict transportation, you wouldnt have Health Care Workers showing up. Are in athink we position to say each less. K eat less. [indiscernible] was of the state are to shut everything down . Startedish you had shutting down businesses sooner considering San Francisco had shut down prior . Do you think new york was late . I think new york was early. I think the actions we took were more dramatic than most. Frankly, we were criticized as being premature. I think if you could rewind the tape, you have to go back to last november. What was going out what was , andning around the world what was the effect going to be here. ,y point about Global Pandemics we were watching china, watching italy well, extrapolate from that on a national basis. What was the first part . Thinkt wondering if you should you have there is a conflict between the city schools. The brazeal and you were having a debate over that. There wasnt a debate. I made the decision to close down city schools. Was a debate about closing city schools and people thought i closed schools prematurely. That was the debate. In retrospect, it shows what we did was right. Do you envision polling places being open . Be woulder everybody be a by mail. We are saying absentee voting is an option. There is a temporary illness provision, it will include the risk of contracting covid19. Many Nursing Homes should facilities do so . Do you understand that question . The community on long island that is seeing a high number. Homee landing is a nursing releasing data, should others be releasing data . We are tracking the Nursing Homes. Want to protect privacy of individuals in Nursing Homes. We do for that back to the homes themselves. We do track it. [indiscernible] what if we have seen in multiple Nursing Homes across the state, particularly downstate we do track them. Some of them are the result of one person. We are looking at that closely. Is still anything you would like the public to know about that . Listhe state to release a of homes that have a higher rate of infection . Nursing homes all where they live. It is not like you can leave a hospital we try to protect their privacy more. If there is a concern we investigate it immediately. June 7 is that going to be a rule of thumb for Mass Gatherings . No. I wouldnt use what they think. Before june 7 . I dont know but i wouldnt use what broadway thinks is a good barometer for anything unless they have been in the health care. Of these projections basically turned out to be wrong. Is a hard thing to model because besides all the variables, you are modeling public behavior and what people will do. At models thatk were put out in january, they had a premise about how effective social distancing would be, what the population would actually comply with. They turned out to be wrong. I think they can be wrong either way. Sayingrried about people the number of cases is going safer. T is now it is not. I am more afraid of the number because people read something into it that is not there. Compliance,e the you will see numbers go up within days literally, days. I take it one day at a time. We extended everything until april 29 on the school closings. Even thats a projection. I wouldnt go past that. What about other areas of the state . Are there other places where you havent seen cases, do you foresee opening schools . Careful of your tense and be careful of counting our chickens before they are hatched. Cases yet, ween are in the midst of this. Dont do a retrospective like its over because that the attitude we have to avoid. You will see more cases in upstate new york. You will see more cases on long island. Ill bet you whatever you want to bet right now so we are not through. Its not over. We are in the midst of it. We have some good news in that what we are doing is working and by the way, we have all been killing ourselves, right, one , ther the other, isolation work of the Healthcare System has been phenomenal, people working 24 hours per day and people exposing themselves but the good news is thats showing a benefit and flattening and flattened the curve at a lower rate than almost any of the models that were projected. Thats the good news. But we are still in the midst of this. The bad news, the terrible news is, look at how many lives we lost. It is breathtaking. The next time we want to think about were getting a little complacent and cavalier, look at the number of people we have lost. Remember that before you decide to go out of the house because you have cabin fever. You go bytric would to make that sort of decision . What would be the Tipping Point . Gov. Cuomo look at the infection rates, that number has to come down, the number of new cases going into a hospital, the infection rate has to come down to a point where you believe the isolation of the vulnerable, the other measures we are taking is enough to start to reopen and then how do you reopen . Its not just broadway theaters. When can you go back to work, when can you go back to school, when will the other essential services open. Before they go to a play, there will be other questions they will ask. Thats going to be a function of numbers, frankly i would like to withat on a regional basis connecticut and new jersey because this is a regional very closeo i stay to governor murphy and governor lamont on those decisions. I dont believe in these geographic distinctions in these situations. , theres no new york city is new york city, there is nassau and suffolk in westchester and rockland. The virus does not stop at a border. These decisions are regional in nature. Broadway is a microcosm obviously but the overall decisions are all in a regional context and i think it will be the numbers and when are the numbers low enough that it is safe . That number wouldnt need to be zero . Be. Cuomo i dont needed to zero. It may never be zero. This whenatch will we go back to normal . You think there is ever going to be a morning that i wake up again in my life not worried about this in the back of my mind . We are all going to worry about if theres a second wave . You dont think we will all worry about when somebody sneezes in asia, how long until that cold comes here . I dont know that we ever get back to zero do you want to mention something, doctor . I concur 100 . Hospitals in queens say they dont have the cartridges . Operational enough technicians who operate the ventilators . Gov. Cuomo they must because somehow they been working. Operatingow what the technician is for a ventilator but i have not heard that. Ive talked to the hospitals every day for the past couple of days to find it was going on and what they need in the heads of the large hospitals as nobody has mentioned that to me. We have over 100 hospitals on the phone. What was the first part of your question . Gas machines have cartridges . Gov. Cuomo the doctor is an expert on blood gas machine cartridges. He gave me some for my birthday last year actually. He said just in case but i did not know what he meant at the time. He gave me a ventilator this birthday so i will put it all together. Are the supplies to run the pointofcare testing. If there is a decrease in supplies, we are looking at all of them to get them to the hospital. Gov. Cuomo i knew what a blood gas cartridge was. You suggested under 10,000 beds. Plateau, nearing the what are the updates on the temporary facilities . Gov. Cuomo if are right, thats my point. We are flattening the curve now below projected peaks because of our behavior. Again, you want to talk about this in the retrospective. There is no retrospective. You are in the middle of it. If you walk in front of traffic on the way home, yes, you are young and yo