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Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio agree on a couple of things: Testing and tracing New York’s infected population remains the key to resolving the COVIC-19 pandemic — and the work ahead will be daunting.
Cuomo, after announcing Wednesday that ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg will pay for a $10 million initial plan to test and trace coronavirus infection rates across the state, acknowledged the next steps in this fight will be difficult almost beyond belief.
“You will trace as many positives as you can, and as the testing number goes up, that number of possible people to be traced is going up,” said the governor. “That’s why it’s an extraordinarily impossible task, and you do the best you can.”
The governor, while asserting the statewide testing would be “ramped up,” admitted he has no time frame for achieving the goal. And de Blasio acknowledged the city isn’t close to having enough coronavirus test kits to fully execute his plan to “ultimately defeat” the lethal virus.
“You need a huge amount of testing,” de Blasio said after announcing plans for three coronavirus testing sites near city housing developments. “Not just tens of thousands per day, as many as hundreds of thousands of tests a day.”
Cuomo sounded a similarly cautious note after announcing the Bloomberg funding, noting good intentions often collide with harsh reality.
“You have weeks to get this up and running,” he said. “It’s a super-ambitious undertaking. And Mayor Bloomberg will help coordinate the entire effort.”
As Cuomo delivered his daily update, demonstrators chanted and honked horns outside on an Albany street to demand the state reopen businesses and schools faster. The governor pushed back against pressure to reopen the state prematurely and potentially risk the lives of New Yorkers.
“Beware, because there can be a second wave, or there could be a third wave,” he said. “So, don’t be cocky just because you got hit by a wave and it didn’t knock you off your feet.”
De Blasio said the city was already preparing the infrastructure to handle the tens of thousands of city residents likely to test positive for COVID-19 once enough tests are available, with eight other testing sites going up at housing developments around the city.
“As we fight to get the testing we need, we’re going to be building this apparatus,” he said.
At this point, the city has located just a single company able to steadily supply the massive number of tests sought by the administration. De Blasio said President Trump needs to step up for his hometown and deliver more of the desperately needed tests.
Cuomo suggested that up to 10% or more of the city’s population was infected.
“How could you possibly trace a million people? You can’t. You do the best you can,” he said. “But for every person you isolate … that’s one less person walking around infecting another 10 people.”
The governor did not detail how the Bloomberg-run pilot plan would interact with federally funded plans or how they would collate and share information.
City officials reported the coronavirus death toll at nearly 15,000, an increase of 569 fatalities from the day prior. Overall, the five boroughs are home to 138,435 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
During what he called a “productive” Tuesday meeting with President Trump, Cuomo said the leaders agreed to double New York’s testing program from the 20,000 daily tests now being performed to 40,000.
And he said the federal government has also allocated $1.3 billion to fund tracing efforts, which Cuomo portrayed as an experiment that would benefit states across the nation as they seek to reopen using the same process.
It wasn’t just protesters questioning the governor’s coronavirus plan, and Cuomo pushed back forcefully against a reporter who echoed the oft-heard argument that the economic pain of the shutdown is worse than the public health cost of the pandemic.
“The illness is death. What is worse than death?” Cuomo said. “Economic pain, bad. Death, worse. Anxiety and stress from being stuck inside the house, bad. Death, worse.”
Latest coronavirus updates: Click here for our roundup of the most important developments from NYC and around the world