Governor Cuomo's Daily COVID-19 Briefing
Notes from Governor Cuomo's COVID-19 Briefing
There were 17,303 total deaths in NYS as of yesterday.
New Cases are now below 1,000/day
335 total deaths yesterday
COVID-19 has exposed flaws in our systems
Remote learning sounds good, but needs improvement.
There was not enough international coordination and response.
The media did not sufficiently warn people.
Public transportation needs to be safe and clean.
NY Forward Reopening Advisory Board
A board of officials, civic leaders, and experts to help plan.
On Schools: A plan to open or stay closed will be out by the end of the
week.
Gov warned about two signs of danger:
o If hospitals hit 70% capacity.
o If the rate of transmission reaches "outbreak"
1.1 infected people per each person.
Gov reiterated his plan for reopening:
o Follow CDC guidelines: number of hospitalizations must be down for
14 days.
o Phase I: Construction/Manufacturing jobs reopen.
o Phase II: Identify businesses that can reopen with low risk.
o Businesses should plan to take the proper precautions
o Follow a testing regimen: 30 tests per 1,000 people/month
o Trace infected people and their interactions.
Mayor Bloomberg has offered to help with tracing
Must have 30 tracers per 100k people
o Must have isolation facilities where people can quarantine without going home.
o Regions must present plans to have rooms available.
More On Reopening NYS
Reimagine tele-medicine and tele-education.
We need a centralized "control room" that will monitor the numbers related to COVID-19.
Central NY in the summer is an “attractive nuisance”.
o The State Fair cannot open.
We need to cooperate regionally and reduce density.
Plans will have to be short-term, because we can't tell what will happen in the long-term.
Testing & Tracing
There will be built-in monitoring mechanisms to send alerts when hospital capacity gets too high or the rate of transmission is too high.
The flu season will raise concerns over testing capacity and hospital capacity.
We need these mechanisms to spot issues as soon as possible.
The state and localities will have to hire certain amounts of people for each region to trace.
The number of positive tests upstate is more similar to other states than it is to downstate.
We must prioritize testing symptomatic individuals.
Testing must be accessible; we need enough testing sites.
Regions must fully advertise these locations.
Health Care Facilities
The state mandated that hospitals increase their capacity by 50%.
Some parts of the state still have capacity issues.
Elective Surgery: DOH will issue guidance (regionally) by the end of the day.
o Regions will be notified where they are regarding capacity.
Nursing Homes
Nursing homes must notify families about the status of their relatives.
Nursing homes are ground zero for the virus.
Predominantly, senior citizens have died from the virus.
Department of Labor
People still aren't getting payments.
Gov says this problem is not specific to NY.
DeRosa: we will extend the order to prevent evictions if necessary.
There was one mailing stuck together, which has caused one mailing series to be messed up.
$3.1 billion has been issued but the backlog continues to build.
400,000 claims are still open.
There are now 3,000 people to answer phones and maintain the website.